


Serotonin

by Hekla_chan



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Medical, Angst, Drama & Romance, First Meeting, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Medical Procedures, Minor Character Death, Romance, Secret Relationship, after accidentally suggesting yuuri has an incestuous affair with his own sister, but he isn't and thai boy was just helping his bff hide his relationship with vitya, grey's anatomysh, medical AU, pichit makes jokes about yuuri having an affair with his hamster
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-10-24 09:49:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 32,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10739220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hekla_chan/pseuds/Hekla_chan
Summary: Yuuri sighed even more than before, rolling his eyes. «Victor Nikiforov, the Russian genius heart surgeon with the lowest percent of deaths in the world is not going to work here, Pichit.»Pichit threw a quick look behind his friend, then came back to him.«Okay. Therefore, I hope that is not an hallucination.»





	1. Congratulations on the failure

**Author's Note:**

> Hey pals! I've decided to come back to writing fics! This is the first time ever I write in English and there actually isn't an italian version of this. Since I'm a medical stuff slut and I'm very much into GA at the moment, I wanted to try this au. Also, it's set in the USA because everyone speaks english so no fictional barriers for language!  
> Enjoy the reading xo  
> Update: since a kind reader who happens to be a med student made me notice this, I must warn you that I am not a medicine student myself yet bc I'm graduating this year from high school, so most of the procedures are just made up for the story and come from my personal researches on google, so they are not accurate, keep that in mind! And if you need to ask me anything you can do it on tumblr or instagram (I have the same username).

 

Yuuri felt like his whole world was about to crash on him, without even doing him the favor of killing him instantly, but leavig him agonizing on the ground throught mistakes and pieces of a shattered life.

He thought of packing up all his things from his locker and go home to be left alone and free to repeat to himself how supid he had been, before anyone could see him and already start to laugh of him.

His plan however was advented by Pichit Chulanont, his colleague as well as best friend, as he entered the room with a wide smile on his face. Yuuri swallowed back both tears and shame and pretended to be tying up the laces on his shoes.

«Hey, Yuuri!» said Pichit, his voice full of glee. He reached for his locker, near to Yuuri’s, to leave his stethoscope and medical gown. «I thought you were still at the ER.»

«Yeah, well, my shift’s over» Yuuri answered, trying to hide his actual humor. The explaination though didn’t actually convince Pichit, but he decided not to inquire. Maybe Yuuri didn’t want to talk, or maybe he just didn’t want to do that at the hospital, where anyone could hear.

Both Yuuri and Pichit were part of a big international academic program. They had studied medicine back in their countries – Pichit in Thailand and Yuuri in Japan – and now they were interns in this huge american hospital in Detroit. They weren’t the only ones though, as other doctors came from lots of different countries. Of course you had to be the best of the best to enter the program, and this always procured Yuuri anxiety, and he wasn’t very good at thinking straight under pressure. He always saw the other doctors as scary people who would do anything to get aknowledged by the great theachers they were lucky to have – this also got him _very_ anxious.

«Why are you smiling like that?» Yuuri asked to diverge Pichit’s attention to something that wasn’t an internally screaming ball of sorrow.

His friend’s smile, if possible, widened. «Cialdini let me remove an appendix. It was so great I wanted to take the thing back home in a jar as a memento!»

«Wow, that’s cool! Coungratulations!» Yuuri faked a smile and a laugher for his friend, his only friend in that whole huge polyclinic. He really was happy for him, but he just couldn’t bear anything good in that exact moment.

«Yeah! Why don’t we go grab something to drink to celebrate?» Pichit asked. He also wanted to lift his friend’s spirit, because he definitely noticed something was wrong, but he feared that a direct question would only break him apart. He wasn’t sure he would accept the invitation though.

«Sure thing» answered Yuuri instead, surprisingly.

«Okay then» said Pichit closing his locker. «Party’s on!»

 

If the party had really got lit, Yuuri couldn’t tell. Or maybe he could state it because he couldn’t remember the party itself.

The only thing that rushed back to his mind as his alarm rang was that he had to get to work in time to be fired. Well, he hadn’t received an order and no one had told him he would’ve been fired, but he knew that for sure, after nearly killing a patient because he couldn’t keep the scalpel away from the damn abdominal aorta. The only thought of that sucked all the will of doing anything from Yuuri’s body, as if he was happy of going to work that specific day.

After he got up, he took a shower, had a couple toasts and a mug of coffee and got to work ten minutes before the visits. Pichit, who was also his roommate, would have been there in a few minutes as well, but Yuuri did thing so that he wouldn’t wake him up.

Yuuri wore his medical gown and put the stethoscope on his neck for what he believed was the last time. He went to the mirror near the entrance door of the interns’ room and stared at his reflection. He was all alone, so no one could have bothered him as he fixed the image in his mind, already scheduling it as a past and far memory. He would have never seen the writing “Doctor Yuuri Katsuki” on anything ever again, even because he had decided to burn his degree papers as soon as they kicked him back to Japan.

The door shot open as the Russian Babicheva and the Italian Crispino entered the room, loudly laughing, followed by other interns. Sara Crispino greeted Yuuri with a smile and a gesture of hand, while Mila Babicheva just waved at him. All the people in that room were mere colleagues of Yuuri.

Many friendships had been born inside the walls of the Detroit General Hospital, but Yuuri wasn’t involved in that process. He had known Pichit before entering the project, thanks to an intercultural exchange, and the case had wanted that they met again after graduation.

As the room grew more and more crowded, Yuuri decided to begin the visits to his patients. He went to the nurses counter and was about to take the folders he needed, but a voice interrupted him.

«Why did you disappear this morning?» came Pichit’s question, a bit of resentment in his voice and look.

Yuuri silently cursed himself for not thinking of a good excuse, then turned around to face his friend – with whom he usually got to work.

«Sorry» he said «I was in a hurry because the patient in room 1750 has a surgery early in the morning…»

«Yuuri» Pichit interrupted the bleeps coming from the Japanese man with a very serious expression on his face. Something inside Yuuri’s mind started to ring like an emergency alarm. «Would you please tell me what’s going on with you? You’ve been acting like a weirdo since yesterday – yeah, I noticed» he added seeing the surprise on Yuuri’s face «and I tried to ignore it hoping that it would just go away, but it’s not. So, please, talk to your best buddy!»

Yuuri took the folder from the counter and thanked the nurse. He locked his eyes on it, trying to find a good way to explain to Pichit that he had almost chopped off the largest artery in the human body; some way that wouldn’t explicitly show how incompetent he had been. Especially with the same surgeon that had let Pichit apply stitches on the very same day, the same surgeon that gave him so many precious teachings and saw them wasted.

«I kinda made a mess in the operating room yesterday» was all he said eventually.

The look on Pichit’s face lightened up a bit. He shrugged and simply said: «Even the best surgeons do that.»

«Well, I almost killed a woman.»

« _Well_ » Pichit jeered him «Unfortunately, that’s what mostly happens when a doctor commits a mistake.»

Yuuri sighed. Pichit kind of made a point, but still he wasn’t fully in peace with himself.

«Please, let’s talk about something else» was Yuuri’s reply.

«’kay» said Pichit. «You’re gonna love this one: the new attending. He starts today.»

Yuuri _really_ appreciated Pichit’s efford, but he actually couldn’t care less of what would have happened in the hospital once he was gone for good.

«Maybe this still isn’t exciting yet for you» continued Pichit «but name the first heart surgeon that comes to your mind.»

Yuuri sighed even more than before, rolling his eyes. «Victor Nikiforov, the Russian genius heart surgeon with the lowest percent of deaths in the world _is not_ going to work here, Pichit.»

Pichit threw a quick look behind his friend, then came back to him.

«Okay. Therefore, I hope that is not an hallucination.» The Thai man turned on his heels and left Yuuri there, half amused and half disconsolate, but very confused.

That was when another voice called him from behind, as if everyone that day had the order of taking him by surprise on the back. It was the third mini heart attack of the day.

He turned around again, and felt a weird desire to die. He really had never understood how a person could see something so beautiful they wished to die, but in that exact moment, he fully realized the meaning of it.

In front of him a tall, wide shouldered man stood with a folder under his arm. His skin was pale, his hair fell soft on his left cheek, platinum blonde. The eyes had the same color of the Caribbean sea, light but deep; he had a gentle line of his mandible and a long and thin nose, beautiful eyelashes and full lips.

«I’m so glad I found you, _doctor Katsuki_!» he said, but his voice sounded a bit too amused on his name.

Yuuri stared at him like a fool, his pupils widened and his breath taken. He should have said something smart like “Deoxyribonucleic acid”, but he just stood there and resumed cursing himself for almost killing a patient yesterday.

Victor Nikiforov, his forever intellectual crush, the man who healed broken hearts in any way you could mean it, made a warm smile and offered his hand. Yuuri shook it shyly and still stunned by the surprise. Nothing in Pichit’s power could have prepared him for this.

«D-Doctor Nikiforov» he babbled «What are you doing here?»

«Starting today I’ll be your new head of cardiac surgery!» Nikiforov replied with his heavy Russian accent, raising his shoulders enthusiastically. «So, I need an intern for a case, a stenosis of the aortic valve. I’m going to replace it – yay!»

Yuuri felt a little pressure on his chest, like someone was poking him with a finger. It wasn’t until he understood that he felt it from the outside that he realized that he was reliving the moment when the blood spilled from the aorta and hit him. The feeling was alarmingly real.

«I… Actually doctor Nikiforov, I…» he babbled again. Wow, what a magnificent first impression.

«You don’t have to fear you’re not capable of doing it» he said innocently. «After all, you’re here to learn, aren’t you? Plus, I’m the one doing the surgery, you’ll be there to answer my questions and memorize the procedure, okay?»

Yuuri felt some veiled authority hidden through those kind words, like he wanted to be friendly without raising any doubt on the fact that _he_ was the attending and _Yuuri_ was the intern.

«Of course, doctor» answered Yuuri, a bit more present than before.

«Good!» exclaimed the other man. «Follow me, we’re going to visit the patient now. Leave that folder here, you’ll be busy for a long time.»

Yuuri obeyed and walked fast to keep up with Nikiforov’s long and decisive step.

“Don’t you dare fucking things up with him” was Yuuri’s friendly reminder to himself.

 


	2. Like I've never seen the sky before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And then he just walked out, leaving Yuuri staring at his ghost on the door.  
> «Ah, Katsuki!» he went back, peeking out the entrance. Yuuri got himself together. «Be sure to sleep tomorrow morning, I don’t want you to be tired» added Nikiforov with a wink, then left again.  
> Yuuri’s blood all rose up to his head, his ears and cheeks burning with embarrassment, but a good one.  
> «God, I’m so gay» he murmured after Nikiforov left, with genuine surprise for himself.

«Nicole Jackson, 42 years old, she laments retrosternal pain and a decreased physical endurance, caused by a stenosis of the aortic valve that will be replaced with a swine one.»

Doctor Nikiforov presented the case to Yuuri. The patient was a blonde woman with a face that transmitted trustiness. She already knew doctor Nikiforov, so she conveyed her attention to Yuuri with a warm smile. She probably didn’t understand a word that came from the doctor, but she knew what she had and was just waiting for the intern to know. Her husband, sit on the side of her bed, was also watching the Japanese man, and this made him feel a bit uncomfortable, but as a doctor, he understood that you had to know the people that were about to open up your wife and put a piece of a pig’s heart inside hers.

«Dr. Katsuki» said Nikiforov once he finished with the case «What else can the retrosternal pain be called?»

«Angina pectoris» Yuuri answered with no peculiar struggle in finding the aswer.

«Correct. Now please could you accompany Mrs. Jackson to do the angiography? The quicker you do, more time you have to study the case before the surgery.»

«Study the case?» asked Mr. Jackson with an alarmed tone. «Don’t tell me he doesn’t even know what to do.»

«You must not worry about that, Mr. Jackson» came Nikiforov’s answer, very measured and easy going. «I’m the only one who’s touching your wife’s heart, but doctor Katsuki here is an intern, he’s here to learn.»

The other man seemed satisfied and nodded. Yuuri, on his side, remained fascinated by how persuasive Nikiforov could be. He had read and seen lots and lots of interviews and articles of him and had imagined how confident he could appear, but seeing it with his very own eyes was another story.

 

At 5 pm, doctor Victor Nikiforov made the first cutting, opening the operating field. Throughout the whole operation, Yuuri stood by the heart surgeon’s left side, close enough to see everything clearly and take mental notes but far enough to avoid bothering his tiny movements.

Nikiforov kept asking him questions, and Yuuri managed to answer all of them successfully, with more or less accuracy. The other doctor however didn’t seem disappointed or something – with Yuuri’s relief.

He asked one more question just while he was making the last stitch.

«So, doctor Katsuki, what plans do you have for tonight?»

Yuuri remained based by that. Was he inviting him to dinner in front of all the nurses? If there was a reason rumors spread so fast in that hospital, it was _the nurses_.

«Um… W-What do you mean, doctor?» asked back Yuuri.

Nikiforov raised his head to look straight at Yuuri’s eyes just before cutting the surgical thread. He stared at him for a second or two, but Yuuri couldn’t decipher the feeling hidden in his deep eyes.

«Exactly what I said, Katsuki» he replied, his eyes still on Yuuri’s.

«Oh, well, I didn’t have any plans.»

«That’s perfect. You can stay near and monitor the patient for the night» he added, cutting the thread. «I undoubtedly made a perfect job, but as a surgeon, I can’t let myself drown in my ego. Good job everyone!» he said to the team in the room, then made a nod towards Yuuri to follow him outside, and they went out thought the applauses.

They threw away their gloves, scrub caps and masks as Nikiforov kept talking.

«Now, Yuuri, you’ve forced me to make you stay here tonight» he said as his smile broke free from the mask.

Yuuri truly was confused. He literally just answered his questions and kept himself at a due distance from him; how could he possibly have forced him to do anything?

«I’m sorry doctor, but I really don’t understand» Yuuri said after a moment oh hesitation.

«Mmh, that’s too bad» he replied. «I wanted to have dinner with you without anyone to know, to keep you at ease, y’know?»

Yuuri froze.  He didn’t think he got the right meaning of the words; maybe it was a Russian way of saying?

The personnel from the operating room was coming out, and Nikiforov also set himself for the exit.

«What about tomorrow night? Keep an eye on your pager, I’ll call you on that until you give me your number.»

And then he just walked out, leaving Yuuri staring at his ghost on the door.

«Ah, Katsuki!» he went back, peeking out the entrance. Yuuri got himself together. «Be sure to sleep tomorrow morning, I don’t want you to be tired» added Nikiforov with a wink, then left again.

Yuuri’s blood all rose up to his head, his ears and cheeks burning with embarrassment, but a good one.

«God, I’m so gay» he murmured after Nikiforov left, with genuine surprise for himself.

 

Pichit hold his head with both hands as he sat on the bed, barely believing his ears.

«Oh my God Pichit, get yourself together» said an alarmed Yuuri. «It’s not like I got laid!»

«Right!» Pichit raised his head. «Where are you going to go after dinner???»

Yuuri’s face flashed red. He really didn’t want to think about that.

«Nowhere! We’re just having dinner together, getting to know each other, small talking. A perfectly ordinary date.»

His friend snorted with a smirk, crossing his legs and taking his phone.

«Not kidding» insisted Yuuri, but the other just ignored him and kept smiling.

The Japanese man stared at the ceiling of the on call room as his friend started watching pugs videos on Instagram, as he guessed by the weird throat noises. Yuuri began thinking about how he should have acted on a date with Victor Nikiforov. It wasn’t like he wasn’t happy with it, it just was _unexpected._ He had the feeling that Nikiforov had been flirting with him since the very first moment they had talked, but he didn’t think he himself was someone you would have got smitten by so easily, especially if you were talking about such a handsome man. It felt _weird_.

«Yuuuuriiii» Pichit teased him. «Everything’s going to be okay, you’re a very enjoyable person and he will desperately fall for you by the end of the evening. Can’t imagine how he will feel by the end of the _night_.»

Yuuri threw a pillow to him, but Pichit caught it promptly. «Wanna bet?» he asked laughing.

The other sighed, and took his pillow back. «No way. You must pay your part of the rent.»

 

Being ten minutes early didn’t help Yuuri feel any less anxious. He thought the worst thing he could have done would have been being late on the first date, so he started to get ready two hours before. The very exact moment he had laid his hand on the door handle, Pichit had stopped him, a deadly serious look on his face, and Yuuri almost panicked looking at the clock.

«Yuuri, your hair.»

«What’s wrong with it?!» asked Yuuri, screaming due to the hurry.

«Push it back! You look better, very cool and smart with your glasses on too.»

«No.»

«Yuuri!» Pichit stopped him from opening the door once again. «Just make the best impression you can!»

And so Yuuri stood there, being only ten minutes early, fearing he actually got the wrong time and that Nikiforov wasn’t showing up. All because his friend prevented him from being _forty-five_ minutes early.

They had agreed to meet in front of the restaurant in which Nikiforov had booked a table for two, a small but elegant stone construction with red tiles on roof and the door. On the front side there were some tables under the awning adorned with wires of led lights, where people were quietly enjoying their dinner in two or four. It looked like everyone was a couple with someone else, and that made Yuuri’s heart bump in his throat.

He tried to find something distracting to think of in order to relax his nerves, and his mind instantly went back to the white sand of Hasetsu, ears filled with the soft pounding of the ocean and skin caressed by the fragrant wind. He found the thought of home comforting.

«Yuuri!»

Nikiforov’s voice sank through his memory, an exclamation full of apologies and relief.

«I am so, _so_ sorry I’m late» Nikiforov said as he reached Yuuri. He was holding one hand into another and panting, a big mortified expression on his face. Scattered tufts of blonde hair fell on his forehead, and the corners of his mouth turned downwards. «I got a urgent call from the hospital just before I could put my coat on, I had to reanimate a patient and then run here.»

«Oh, no worries at all, doctor!» said hastily Yuuri before he could apologize more. «It’s… It’s just job, eh eh…»

«Yuuri» said Nikiforov again, as if he found the pronunciation of Yuuri’s name somehow pleasant. He pouted. «Don’t call me that outside the hospital. I also have a name, you know.»

The attendant made a little laugh, waiting the reply from the other man, who couldn’t help blushing, focusing on his feet.

«Okay, call for censors, let’s get our table!» said the doctor, waving an arm to let Yuuri in before himself.

The waiter led them to their place, a round table in a small corner of the room, near a fireplace with crackling flames dancing and spreading heat in the ambience; an oil lamp emitting a soft light was fixed over them. The walls were all made with exposed bricks that were painted of a dark shade of red from the floor to the height of the fireplace, and from that point to the ceiling they were black. The same wires of led bulbs of the awning formed a web of light under the roof, so it really wasn’t a dark place at all.

They found the table already prepared for the two of them, and the waiter came back two seconds after to pour two glasses of red wine for them; though Yuuri only asked for water.

«Do you mind if I already chose the wine?» asked Victor with a bit of worry in his voice. «You can choose any drink you want of course.»

«I don’t mind at all» Yuuri answered, appreciating his thoughtfulness. «I just prefer to avoid alcohol when possible…»

«Oh, right» replied the other. He couldn’t know that the embarrassment that flushed on Yuuri’s cheeks was due to so many awkward situations in which the lack of control of his drunk-self had dragged him into.

They both ordered something so eat; the Japanese man opted for some cod fillet while the Russian for some beef dish that he stated was awesome with red wine.

When the waiter left again, Victor leaned his chin on his hand back, talking to Yuuri with a smitten look.

«So, Yuuri» he said «How long have you been working in Detroit?»

«Four years now» answered Yuuri with a shy smile.

Victor made a whistle and stared at him with astonishment. «You’re not a beginner; you tried to fool me!» he laughed.

Yuuri’s shy smile widened. «Not really» he said. «I lack of self-confidence and that leads me to make mistakes.»

«Mmh… They told me you were quite a great doctor instead» the heart surgeon replied. «Cialdini said you rarely make the wrong diagnosis.»

«That… may be true» the intern adjusted his glasses on his nose. «But it’s different in the operating room.»

«And you’re telling this to your chief, who decides whether or not you should scrub up for a surgery.»

«Well, we also aren’t supposed to have dinner together, in theory.»

«Ohh» Victor exclaimed as his eyes widened. «So you see this as a date?»

Yuuri panicked. What should he have said? He thought Victor was undoubtedly flirting with him; he even blinked at him! He didn’t want to make a bad impression by misunderstanding his behavior, so he just stared at him with his mouth opened in awe and Victor didn’t move a muscle.

Suddenly, the Russian man broke into a laugh, and he laughed so hard that tears were beginning to form in his eyes, plus, the people in the close proximity turned to see what was happening. In the meantime, despite the charming sound of Victor’s laugher, Yuuri wanted to die so hard. Like, if a giant carnivorous dinosaur busted indoors and grasped him in this fangs, he would happily drop his instinct to fight for his life. But then Victor spoke again: «Боже мой!» he said, but the other man didn’t understand. «You should have seen your face! Wow, my colleagues do say I have a magnificent poker face» and then broke into a loud laugher again.

Yuuri stared at him with half a smile forming on the corner of his mouth, the way you look at a mad man.

«Yes, yes, call it a date» said the heart surgeon. «Yeah, if this isn’t a date I really don’t know what could be.»

Yuuri made a sigh so long that his lungs were about to collapse. The terror that catches your bowels in the exact moment you realize you’re making a bad impression that huge was something his stomach couldn’t bare.

He avidly drank his water, emptying his glass.

«Do you often make these jokes?» asked Yuuri, waving his hand to his face, which had turned alarmingly red.

«Not as you expect» replied Victor. «Honestly, I wanted to know how much you can blush. I had to stop to prevent you from fainting, but I think it’s very cute.»

“Wow” thought the Japanese man. That Nikiforov really did not have any filter while flirting.

They spent the rest of the evening chatting about anything, also work. Victor told him about his many travels around the world, which innovative techniques he had applied, the great doctors he collaborated with. Yuuri listened very carefully, registering every expression on his face as he spoke. Sometimes, when he talked about experimentation, his eyes glowed a little, like a small spark pulsing through the ashes of a dead hearth, but for the rest of it, he just said stuff, just to talk about something. The other man noticed that, but couldn’t tell the exact reason behind it. Maybe those memories dated back to hard times, maybe some old acquaintance to forget was linked to them. He decided to take the word, and speak about his specialization. He told Victor that he had taken heart surgery as well, but of course he also did other surgeries because he was still an intern. Victor clapped his hands enthusiastically at the thought that he could have spent so much time with him, and the Japanese man was very pleased with that; even though he did not know what attracted his attention on him.

As he realized they had only been talking about medicine for like an hour, Yuuri told himself off.

Any other doctor on this planet would have wanted to steal every tiny piece of knowledge from Victor Nikiforov’s brain, but that wasn’t his case. He wanted to know about Victor Nikiforov himself, what he loved, what he hated, who were his friends and family, what he did in his spare time, what he watched on Netflix.

He didn’t know where to start, so he chose the worst start ever.

«You know… I really love poodles.»

Victor stared at him with his sip of wine still in his mouth. He had a weird look on his face, like he was surprised or alarmed.

“Oh no” thought Yuuri. “He’s a cat person!”

Victor swallowed, and then made a big heart shaped smile: «I llllooove poodles too!» he exclaimed.

Now it was Yuuri’s turn to stare back. He stayed still with fork and knife in his hands and his lips ajar. Victor’s smile hesitated, trembling at the edge of his mouth. His expression cracked with terror for a tiny moment right before Yuuri broke into a laugh, a hysteric laugh, as if he had held a joke or something for long.

«I’m-I’m sorry…» the Japanese man managed to say sniggering with tears in his eyes. «It’s… It’s just that… Oh my God.»

He looked at the ceiling and made a huge breath to regain his decency as people turned around once again to see what weird thing was happening.

«I… At first I thought this would have been so hard… Like, sitting in front of you, eating with you, even just talking to you… Instead it is just so easy! I keep regretting everything I say just the moment after I say it and it just turns out to be just the right thing to say and I love poodles and you love poodles and…»

Yuuri broke into a laugh again, covering his mouth with the back of his hand as he desperately tried to keep it quiet, and Victor smiled at what he said, giggling a bit and adding two or three shades of red to his cheeks.

 

They kept talking about silly things. Each glass of wine brought Victor closer to Yuuri, until their chairs were just attached. At first, when Victor’s leg, as he leaned on the table to pour another glass of wine, touched Yuuri’s, he drew back a little, but that shyness was soon to be defeated.

At a certain point, Yuuri had to stop Victor from drinking more.

«C’mon Yuuri!» the Russian exclaimed.

«I don’t know where you live, you need to be able to drive!» replied the other.

«Fine. Then let’s go for a walk so I can refresh my mind!» suggested Victor, winking at his date with his index finger on his smiling lips.

Yuuri followed his offer, carried by a sudden pulse of impudence. They grabbed their coats and made their way to the outside, after Victor insisted to pay for the whole dinner.

«No. Way.» he said. « _I_ am taking _you_ out for dinner.»

They stepped into the fresh night air. The lights from the restaurant drew black shapes on the road in front of them. Now there were many less people still sit at their tables – well, that was probably due to the fact that it was a quarter past one.

Victor looked at Yuuri as he buttoned his coat, thick clouds of heat coming from his breath.

«Your ears and nose are red» he laughed, removing the other’s glasses to clean the lens.

Yuuri giggled in embarrassment as he buried his neck in his shoulders to fight the cold. The Russian man threw quick looks to his date to admire the gentle features of his face without getting noticed; his full, flushing cheeks, his nose slightly upturned, the very dark eyelashes on his cinnamon brown irises and his lips, always a bit stretched. With the excuse of putting his glasses back on, he touched his jowls to find out whether they were really as soft as they seemed.

«So» said Yuuri. «Where do you want to go?»

Victor kept staring at him, without giving any suggestion whether he was going to answer or not. He looked right in his pupils in search for an answer to his many questions.

Yuuri’s eyes were glowing with a bright light. He stopped when Victor did; their two existences just ceased to proceed forward, as if, in that exact instant, they were gloriously immortal. Victor’s hands gently laid on Yuuri’s cheeks, one of his thumbs caressing the skin on the chin with the slightest and timorous anticipation, the greed from his look already tasting the flavor of that disclosed mouth that betrayed a desire not different, either in object or intensity, from his.

The cold was slowly destroying Yuuri’s lips, but they were already basking in Victor’s taste as he leaned closer enough for the Japanese man to feel the heat of his breath. Their noises barely touched each other’s cheekbones, when the pager ringed.

«I swear» said Victor without moving further or back «It rang in so many inappropriate moments, but this time…»

«It’s okay» replied Yuuri, his voice full of regret. He should’ve thrown himself on Victor as soon as he figured out he wanted to kiss him, instead of losing himself in his damn beautiful eyes. «It’s our job.»

The attendant checked on the small device, frowning his eyebrows.

«It’s the aortic valve. The patient got a cardiac arrest» he informed Yuuri, without raising his head from the pager.

«What?» exclaimed Yuuri. «And now?»

«Now she’s stable, but I should go check…»

Victor’s expression was full of sincere displeasure; he looked at Yuuri almost begging for his forgiveness. The Japanese man was displeased as well of course, but he didn’t want to let it be a burden for his date’s duty.

«Go now. They need you» said Yuuri.

«Sounds almost chivalrous» replied the other with a thankful smile, before turning around.

Yuuri looked at his back as he hurried up the pitch, still looking at his pager, almost as if he wished it could get a “False alarm” message. They both knew that could never happen. If the pager rang, you ran; it was just the way it was, and you could have been the best surgeon in the world, but that small device would have still stood over your head.

At a certain point, Victor stopped. Yuuri feared that he had get another emergency message, but the heart surgeon turned around again and walked fast back to him with a determined look on his face, like a gladiator entering the arena to face the lion.

He didn’t even give him the chance to say anything or to catch his breath, Victor grabbed Yuuri’s face with both his hands and kissed him. A real kiss. Lips against lips, Yuuri’s initial stillness melting into burning thirst and Victor’s tongue making his way to his date’s.

The Russian man played with him, tasting every inch he could reach. Their tongues engaged a rousing dance that felt just like the right thing to do, sliding and pressing against each other as their bodies became more and more captives of the urging desire they shared. Victor pulled Yuuri closer to him, canceling any physical space between them, and Yuuri grabbed Victor by the shoulder not to allow the man to stop until he said so.

They kissed breathing in each other’s mouth, sharing every little cloud of burning vapor forming in the chill night; they kissed until they ran out of air, then they stopped, only because they were gasping in need of a minimal breath, but they kept holding each other.

«I just couldn’t avoid that» said Victor as if he wanted to apologize, but Yuuri knew he actually didn’t and would have done everything again from the start. And he was completely fine with that.

«Well, no need to struggle in avoiding it, be my guest» said indeed Yuuri, but all the confidence he had gained some moments before just faded as he violently blushed.

«Okay» said Victor, giggling, as he let him completely touch the ground with his feet again. «Now I’ll go. I’ll let you know my poodle on our second date.»

Yuuri laughed, and removed his glasses to scratch his nasal septum. «See you tomorrow at work then.»

The Russian man winked at him, then made his way back to his car.

«It was both metaphorical and non!» he shouted twenty meters away from the Japanese, before actually leaving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yoooo peeps! Here we are one week later!  
> I tried my best to ruin their first moment just so that I could fix it after ಥ‿ಥ  
> Please, leave a comment if you liked the chapter of want to give me some advices!  
> Here's my tumblr: http://hekla-chan.tumblr.com/ where you can also ask me questions of commission me for art!  
> See you on chapter three!


	3. All I've ever known is how to hide a secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey there people! So here's another chapter. This is kind of a passage step in the story because from the next episode we will see more characters and more complexity.Things between Yuuri and Victor will get more complicated so I suggest to stay tuned ;)  
> Leave a comment if you have something to ask/say, or you can also find me on tumblr with the same username!

Find me on [Tumblr](hekla-chan.tumblr.com) and check out my digital painting of this chapter!

 

 

 

 

 

Victor walked straight towards him with no emotions on his face and told him to follow. At first Yuuri thought he had messed something up so bad that he should have started running, but changed his mind as soon as he realized he was being taken to the on call room. They sneaked in when nobody was looking, and Victor locked the door behind them.

«Good morning!» he said to Yuuri, who made a huge smile and giggled in response. Victor surpassed him and took something from a drawer in the bedside table under the window – two cups of coffee.

«You took me in a private, locked room in the dark to give me coffee?» he teased him, taking the coffee to his mouth.

«Wait» Victor grabbed his wrist and leaned closer to him. Yuuri held his breath as the other kissed him, slowly tasting his lips again. The intern couldn’t help but touching Victor’s mouth with his tongue, which led to them climbing on each other’s body. The attendant pressed Yuuri’s head against his as the other held him tight.

«Is this enough?» said the heart surgeon with a mischievous smirk, Yuuri’s hand on his waist.

«It will be if the coffee’s still hot» replied the other.

«That’s not fair. _I am_ already hot enough» said Victor.

Yuuri went out first, sipping his coffee with nonchalance as he walked to the interns room, and Victor made his way to the showcase two minutes after him.

When the intern reached his destination, all his colleagues were putting their scrubs on. Pichit was checking his hair in the mirror when Mila Babicheva playfully pushed him away from it. Sara Crispino was unsuccessfully trying to have a conversation with the Korean Seung-Gil Lee, but the man just kept on reading his notes on a small agenda. After a while, Yuuri noticed the Italian doctor was starting to get pissed, and he feared that her twin Michele would come out from nowhere and start a fight.

The Japanese tried to reach for his friend Pichit, but Cialdini’s voice interrupted him. Everyone in the room stopped doing whatever they were doing and turned to him. The attendant proceeded to assign the interns their cases, and Yuuri ended up with Sara, with a case of heart surgery. He would have preferred to avoid interacting with Victor in the presence of any other intern, but it just wasn’t something he could avoid forever.

Sara, however, was an enjoyable person; she was kind of a personal space invader, but when you got used to have her around you realized how she was just extremely friendly – on the contrary of her brother though.

«Wohoo, today is heart surgery!» she exclaimed as they walked together to their patient room.

«Weren’t you into neurosurgery?» asked Yuuri. He should have known that kind of information about his colleagues, but since Pichit was the only one he actually called a friend, most of what he knew about the others came from the Thai man’s instagram.

«Uhmmm, I like both very much actually» she answered, holding her chin with her slim fingers. «I am more projected towards neurosurgery, but I won’t certainly refuse an aortic bypass.»

Yuuri swallowed at the sound of those last two words. The accident he was involved into was still too fresh in his mind for him to be able to safely touch an aorta. He didn’t want to fail in front of Victor – well, not _that_ resoundingly at least. He knew anything he did would have looked like a kid playing with plastic blades and dummies if compared to the heart surgeon’s majestic work.

The two attendants took the clinical file of the patient – a seventy-three-year-old man – and read it before entering the room.

They found Nikolai Plisetsky in his bed. The gray-haired man was talking to a young boy with light green eyes and shoulder-long blonde hair. He looked back at him with a warm smile, full of affection for the elderly he was probably related to. They were speaking in another language Yuuri didn’t recognize, and it seemed like they were making jokes. Sara whispered to her colleague that it was Russian.

When the two doctors came in, the two of them went quiet. Plisetsky’s smile of circumstance was still on his face, but the young boy looked up and down to them. No one said a word, until Sara broke the silence.

«Good morning! I am doctor Sara Crispino, and this is doctor Yuuri Katsuki.»

The elderly bumped the boy’s shoulder, still speaking in Russian. The blonde answered back, but he looked irritated and kept on giving hostile glances to the interns, who didn’t know a single word in Russian.

«Hello everybody!» Victor’s voice broke the silence which had fallen again in the room, heavily putting his hands on Yuuri and Sara’s shoulders. «как вы, николай?» he added, approaching the patient. Plisetsky greeted him with joy, and It looked like he and Victor had already known each other.

«One of you introduce the case, please» said the attendant after he was done.

Yuuri gladly let Sara take the word and report every detail she had read two minutes before, and noticed the smallest glance Victor gave him before listening to the other intern and proceeding to question both of them about the procedure.

After he was done, Victor nodded satisfied.

«Mr. Plisetsky here only speaks Russian, but his grandson will translate basic stuff from English» said the attendant. The boy behind him, sat on a chair next to the bed with his chin resting on the hand, snorted without bothering to hide his disappointment. Yuuri felt a bit annoyed by it, but he didn’t show any reaction, of course. Plus, that boy could have been no more than sixteen years old, while the Japanese was an adult man by now.

«Though I must be present when communicating important things, since Yuri here is only fifteen» concluded Victor. «Yes, we have a Russian version of your name, doctor Katsuki» he added, seeing the surprise on the faces of both the interns.

«And how old are these two? Ten?» the blond boy spoke in English for the first time, but he did it with so much enmity that probably both Yuuri and Sara would have preferred he had continued to speak Russian.

The heart surgeon gently pushed them out of the room, after saying something to the patient, then spoke in a low voice to his interns.

«Nikolai is an old friend of family, he came all over here from Russia just to get this thing done by me; he has seen me the very first day I was born.»

Victor’s voice sounded a bit agitated, but a vague tone of threat leaked from it. That only led Yuuri’s anxiety to grow more.

«Those two are each other’s families and they have no one else. The boy’s only fifteen as I said, so please do not react to his provocations. He’s just scared.»

Pity flew through Yuuri’s mind as he listened to Victor, hands tightening around the stethoscope in his pocket. The attendant rubbed the back of his neck, thinking about something that painted a sorrowful expression on his face. Yuuri wanted to hug him and comfort him whatever he had, but he couldn’t. Not in that moment.

«I see» answered Sara. «I will follow your orders with the maximum precision, doctor Nikiforov.»

Victor nodded, then told them to prepare the patient for the surgery. Sara quickly obeyed, but Yuuri hesitated for an instant to stay out of ear from her.

«You’re not fine» he said to the Russian as he sighed.

«No, I’m not» agreed the other, putting a hand on the hip and dropping the other.

 

But the surgery couldn’t go better. Mr. Plisetsky had some heart problems that got worse with the advancement of his age, nothing that Victor and a good period of rest couldn’t fix though. During the work, Yuuri could perceive Victor’s tension, but the tiny movements of his hands didn’t seem to betray any feeling of stress. At the end of the procedure – in which both the interns had contributed – Sara was enthusiast of the experience of seeing one of the best surgeons in the world working with her very own eyes, in the very same room.

Victor congratulated to all the staff in the operating room before leaving with Sara to his heels, asking a bunch of hard questions Yuuri had to take notes of. When she finally invited Yuuri to go eat something, he just said he had another patient to check.

«Okay, see you at lunch then. Show up!» she said while leaving.

Yuuri turned around to look at Victor’s status. His forehead was still a bit corrugated, the veins drew pale blue rivers of blood underneath his deadly gray skin on his arms and hands as he massaged his neck with fatigue printed on his face. The dark circles under his eyes were just an unneeded detail. He dropped the weight of his body on one leg and leaned his hand on the board of the sink, still wearing his cap.

«What’s wrong?»  said Yuuri, alarmed by the man’s look. They had known each other for just three days, but he always found him radiant as sunrays at noon, and now it was like a dirty patch to throw away in the organic waste.

Victor didn’t answer immediately, instead he lowered his head and tapped the floor with his toes.

«I’m always operating» he said. «Every single day I open up people’s chests and literally hold their hearts in my hands. At first it feels great… You feel powerful. That person’s life is in your hands to be saved, and you have to apply centuries of research and knowledge and ability to fix that fist sized cluster of self-stimulatory cells.»

He raised his hand, cupping and invisible heart with energy, his knuckles going white, like a Shakespearian tragic hero.

«After some time, you start to get used to it. Then it becomes normal, just ordinary life, as if there weren’t other people out there in the waiting room struggling to keep themselves together as you open up their beloved ones. Until you happen to be both the person in the waiting room and the one in the operating room.»

Yuuri moved closer to him, putting a hand on his back. He could feel the tense in every single muscle his fingers would reach, so he started rubbing him, just to make Victor feel some warmth.

«The surgery was perfect» he said to the attendant, leaned over the sink with his eyes closed, as if he was about to throw up.

«I know» Victor replied, his voice cracking. If there was anyone else in the room, they would have run to grab their phone and take a shot of the always flawless doctor Victor Nikiforov finally crashing. To Yuuri, that vision gave sadness, even though he had never imagined to see his idol under his mask.

Silent tears streamed down Victor’s face, digging wet shiny paths on his skin, hiding under his chin and jumping down. «I hadn’t felt this pressure for so long, I had faced any surgery with such calm and confidence, I…»

He shook his head, staring with disbelief at his fleeting reflection in the glass that opened on the operating room, as if he had disappointed himself.

He pulled himself together pretty soon though. After some moments, he breathed in and smiled to Yuuri in an apologizing gaze.

«I’m sorry, we just started dating and I already am a mess.»

The intern giggled due to the irony of the situation. «Everyone’s a mess inside» he said. «You can open up with me; I’m shy and all but I’m a good listener.»

Victor widened his smile, then leaned towards Yuuri and put his head on the other’s shoulder. The heart surgeon took deep breaths as the black-haired man rubbed his back. They stood there, in the silence of aseptic tools and deep fears.

None of them knew how much comfort their warmth was giving to the other.

 

The day ended up again with Victor asking him out. He suggested to order some food and stay at his place, so that Yuuri could meet Makkachin. The attendant had noticed how interested his date was in the poodle, and he was like a proud parent, so it just made him happy.

Victor’s home wasn’t that far from the hospital; it was in a quiet neighborhood in which streets were large and well illuminated; big, perfectly maintained elms were planted at regular intervals on the sidewalks. They parked on the alleyway beside the entrance. The house was a two-floored building of white wooden boards with a portico on the front side. On the railing there were some pots with colorful flowers which Yuuri admired as Victor opened the door.

«Don’t be afraid if he starts jumping on you» he said, turning his key and opening. «He’s very friendly.»

 «Don’t worry, dogs are my fav…» started Yuuri, but he never managed to complete the sentence.

A giant, brown, fluffy poodle rushed out of the house with his mouth open to let his long dump tongue hang out, and it looked like he was smiling. When they saw the new guest, his big black eyes shined with excitement and joy from under the soft and tight curls. He jumped on Yuuri, stepping on him with his little paws, and started sniffing his face as his tail whipped Victor’s legs.

«That’s what I mean by “jumping on you”» specified the owner of the poodle, pulling him away with one arm around his shoulders to let the other man stand up again.

As Yuuri brushed away the dirt from his clothes, Makkachin greeted his owner as well, trying to lick his face, but Victor only allowed him one “kiss” on the cheek.

They finally got in, the poodle opening the way without ever stopping his tail from wagging. The living-room was huge and took almost all the space on the ground floor, leaving a small part for the kitchen. The tv was hanging on the wall in front of a blue armchair and a sofa, with a small footrest of the same color, with wooden legs, and a coffee table; all around the room there were shelves overflowing with books of any genres, from medicine manuals to Greek mythology collections, and also a lot of plates, prices and awards, casually positioned between ornaments that seemed to come from a lot of different countries. On the walls, a bunch of certificates with golden letters in elegant fonts and red stamps were framed next to pictures of Victor and Makkachin. In some of them, the dog wasn’t but a little pup, and the doctor looked so much younger that Yuuri could still notice some infant traces in his traits. He also had surprisingly long hair.

The kitchen was separated from the living-room only by a counter. It was very small, with only the necessary, and Yuuri thought that Victor didn’t seem to spend much time in cooking.

The heart surgeon took the other’s coat and hanged it next to his, in the entrance, then made Yuuri sit on the sofa and went to the kitchen. Makkachin followed the new friend, who offered him his hand to sniff at with his wet nose before scratching his ears. When Victor came back with two glasses of wine, he found the dog with his head on the man’s lap, his eyes closed. Yuuri looked at him with an apologizing expression.

«I couldn’t prevent him from climbing on the sofa» he said.

The Russian man sit next to him with a dork smile, handing a glass to Yuuri, who refused it.

«C’mon, I just wanna get you drunk to take you in my bed» joked Victor, and the other conceded it to him, accepting his wine.

«Only one though» warned the Japanese man, sipping the yellow bubbles.

«You’ll be drunk off your ass by the end of the night» was Victor’s reply.

«Oh my God, you’re so flirty» laughed Yuuri blushing. Victor laughed with him and stretched his back.

«Uhmmmm, I made three long surgeries today» the attendant said, slowly leaning against the soft fabric of the sofa.

«I went to the ER, when we parted» said the other. «I found a guy who accidentally stapled himself.»

«What? How many pins did you remove?»

«None. I dumped him to a first year intern of Pichit’s. He stapled his butt, I wanted nothing to do with that guy.»

Victor broke out in a loud laugher who made Makkachin raise his head with a twitch, while Yuuri kept on sipping his wine, his lips contracted in a smile.

«You should have seen how happy he was to inject an anti-tetanus.»

The Russian man hold his stomach to prevent his bowels to explode, and Yuuri finally joined his laugh.

«It’s just our second date and I’m already letting myself spill out ridiculous things like this» said the black-haired doctor, murmuring against his glass.

Victor couldn’t answer soon, because he had to catch his breath and dry his tears.

«It feels like the umpteenth date» he finally said, scratching his poodle between the eyes with a look full of love.

«I guess so.»

They remained in silence for a while, Victor petting his dog and Yuuri tasting the wine on his tongue, but there was no ebarrassment. The bubbles crackled in his mouth as his eyes wandered through all the pictures framed. There was no one else besides Victor and Makkachin. Curiosity veiled his look.

«Are you thinking about today, after our surgery?» Victor suddenly asked. He didn’t raise his eyes from the poodle.

Yuuri hesitated for a second. «Yes, actually» he answered. «I don’t want you to feel bad about your work.»

The heart surgeon smiled a bit. «I don’t feel bad about it. It’s just that…»

He didn’t finish his sentence; Yuuri felt he was searching for the right words, without any satisfying result. He wanted to do something to make him feel better, to make him feel warm, but he was just too shy. It was different from the time in the pre-operating room. Despite all his struggles, he felt like that was his place. Maybe he didn’t feel the best or good enough for any of his colleagues, but it was where he basically lived. He spent most of his daytime in there, he knew every face he met and knew where everything was. It was basically home.

There, at Victor’s place, he was just out of his comfort zone, and for an anxious subject that wasn’t something insignificant.

«Do you want to talk about it?» he asked Victor, who finally looked at him. He had a sad expression, but he smiled at Yuuri with gratitude.

«I need to clear up my mind first» he answered before sighing. «Can I kiss you? I feel motions of affection when people care about me» he joked.

Yuuri giggled, blushing again. «Wow. You ask for my permission to kiss me after saying you want to get me drunk in you bed.»

«Just to warm up» he replied. «We can have sex after.»

The Japanese man flushed red, his body temperature switched to one hundred degrees.

Victor frantically kept on apologizing as he took the glass from Yuuri’s hands to put it on the coffee table and prevent him from getting any hotter. He used Makkachin’s long ears to fan him as the dog licked those burning cheeks.  

«What about a nineteenth century type of courting?» asked the attendant.

«I-I think that’s less d-dangerous…» agreed Yuuri, pulling the neck of his sweater.

«Let’s get some pizza though. I’m getting hungry.»

 


	4. The Train Has Whistled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> «Doctor Nikiforov, do you want me to declare the time of death?»

The accident happened a week after. Yuuri ran through the hallways of the Detroit General Hospital avoiding nurses and personnel, panic spreading from his stomach to his toes. When he saw Victor, he was standing in front of the open door of a patient’s room. The look on his face was one of the worst he had ever seen on a person. Anguish and terror distorted the always chilled features of his countenance, his eyes were two wells of dirty water and gray, swollen lines drew arches of disbelief under them. Platinum tufts of hair fell flat on his forehead; his skin dry and pale.  
Yuuri carefully reached his side. He glanced at the patient on the bed, where nurses and Sara Crispino were moving silently, removing tubes and turning off monitors. The long, frustrating, accusatorial beep finally ceased.  
«Doctor, you must declare the time of death» said a nurse to the Italian intern. She didn’t say anything, but looked at Victor in search of an answer, a permission, just a nod. She tried to reach his deep, empty look, but she couldn’t. No one in that room could, and not even Yuuri who was still standing beside his boyfriend. The woman finally spoke.  
«Doctor Nikiforov, do you want me to declare the time of death?»

One week before

«It’s so sweet of him» said Pichit tying his shoes, ready to start another day at work. «To get you your favorite flowers.»  
«I don’t have a favorite flower» Yuuri answered. He put his cherry blossoms in his locker, hoping that no one smelled them or that they didn’t die. He was having a brief flashback of their flowering season back in Japan. A picture made of pink and light and soft, perfumed wind. «He’s getting us discovered this way.»  
«Nah, do not worry» the other answered. «Any rumor stays a rumor if Pichit Chulanont doesn’t confirm. And I’m bonded by the tight obligation of friendship and… Nikiforov being one of the bosses.»  
Yuuri laughed. They were alone in the small room, sat in front of monitors showing cross sections of every inch of the woman in the machine. She came from a bad car crash, and lamented strong pain in her chest and stomach, which was also pretty inflated. Both of them were perfectly able to make a right diagnosis – after all they were at their fourth year. They had been making surgeries without any supervisors for two. After a while, Pichit pointed out a dark stain over the intestine, and it was also extended enough for an emergency surgery, along with the damaged pleura over the left lung.   
They went to ask a quick confirmation to Cialdini and Nikiforov – Pichit would have prepared the patient for the operating room while Yuuri searched for the attendants – but the Japanese intern got stuck in the hallways.  
He was walking fast, holding the exams in one hand and the pager in the other, trying to find a right number. His pace suddenly slowed down when he saw a blonde head through the medical scrubs.   
Plisetsky jr. was leaned against the information desk in the waiting room, intensely chatting with Mila Babicheva in Russian. It didn’t seem like they had just met. Yuuri lowered his head and kept walking, obstinately trying not to figure out why they were so close, but in vain, because when the boy noticed him, he liquidated the red-haired woman and advanced towards him with a secure and arrogant walk. The doctor had to give up to save the least of dignity that had remained to him.  
«Good morning, Yuri P…»  
«What’s going on with you and that other one?» asked Yuri without any shame, leaving the Japanese Yuuri speechless.  
«Wh-Who are you talking about?»   
«Victor, of course!»  
«He’s an attendant, and this is a university hospital» answered Yuuri. «Therefore, Nikiforov is also a teacher, in these walls. Which is the one and only reason I’m around him.»  
«You just repeated his words» replied Yuri, starting to get pissed.   
“Ahhh, kids these days” thought the doctor. «Yeah, apparently he says that to a lot of patients.»  
Yuuri glanced over the boy’s head towards Mila, who immediately turned away – it was too late though; he had caught her overhearing the conversation. Not that it really mattered: he didn’t even know what Yuri could have insinuated with her before talking to him.  
«Tell him he must stay concentrated» the blonde boy dragged his attention back to him. «He must give one hundred percent on my grandfather, no matter if the surgery went fine.»  
«Of course» said the other. «Now excuse me, I need to go ask a consultation.»  
Yuuri literally fled from the boy’s inquisitive look and Mila’s supersonic ears.

Victor literally gave a three-seconds look at the film before confirming Yuuri and Pichit’s diagnosis.   
«It didn’t involve any major blood vessel, though you should act quickly before it gets bigger» he said, looking and the dark spot in the abdominal-pelvic cavity, then examined the pneumothorax. «Yes, you can fix this one on your own, it’s not that big, but you probably know better since you visited the patient.»  
«I took out some air to alleviate the pressure; it wasn’t like this when she first arrived» Yuuri told the attendant, who hummed with his finger on his lips.  
«It will get inflated again very soon.»  
«I know. I have your permission then?»  
Victor smiled, opening the file of his own patient. «You don’t need my permission at all, Yuuri.»  
The intern nodded, and put the films back in the folder he was holding under his arm. He stood there, looking at his feet, tapping his fingers on the file like a kid who had just wet his sheets.  
«’kay, listen» he finally said when Victor snapped his fingers in front of his face. «Plisetsky’s grandson plated me on the hallway and asked me what’s between you and me.»  
Victor stared at him as if he was waiting for the other to continue, and so did Yuuri. «Mila Babicheva was like three meters away. She was listening and now she will… think something.»  
The attendant shrugged as he leaned his elbow on the table of the room behind the nurse desk, unable to find his boyfriends insinuation anywhere.  
«Victor, you were the one that made me spend a whole night at work just to make sure no one suspected we would have dinner together!»  
«You don’t have to worry about those two» said the heart surgeon, distractedly taking Yuuri’s hand and entwining their fingers. «Mila and I worked in the same hospital at her first year, back in Saint Petersburg, two years ago, and Yuri is like… a third?» he wandered «Cousin of mine. They won’t tell anyone if I speak to them.»  
Yuuri sighed, but he wasn’t fully convinced nor relaxed. He tightened the grip on Victor’s hand, and he answered back as well.  
«It’s fine as long as Baranovskaya doesn’t know» the attendant added with soft voice, pulling Yuuri closer to him. The intern looked behind his back to see if anyone from the outside was paying attention to them, then looked back at his boyfriend.  
«Baranovskaya? What about Feltsman?»  
Victor waved his hand as if to liquidate the matter.  
«He was my teacher before the program, when I was an intern, always back in Saint Petersburg…»  
«How come this hospital is full of Russians? It’s like watching winter Olympics.»  
They both laughed, then Victor continued speaking. «Anyway, he was like a father to me. He cares about me; he will get mad and all at first but there will be no consequences.»  
«”Will”?» Yuuri repeated. «Why not “would”?»  
The expression on the heart surgeon’s face cracked in his own betrayal as he realized what had leaked out because of his bad word choices, and Yuuri uncrossed their hands as he made a step backwards to have a better view and give him the best accusatorial look.  
«Victor, you didn’t tell Yakov about us?» he asked, but it didn’t really sound like a question; maybe more like a statement he needed to see confirmed.  
Victor gasped, trying to speak, but when he said the first syllable, someone knocked.  
«Yuuri?»  
«What?!» loudly exclaimed Yuuri, turning around to see who called him. «Pichit» he said, his voice lowered, his expression less frowning.  
«The pneumothorax. It inflated again and we need to operate her now.»  
The Japanese man glanced at Victor one last time before rushing out and run to his patient room.

«Why didn’t you call me on the pager?» came Yuuri’s question as he opened the patient’s thorax. Pichit would have handled the hematoma near the intestine while the Japanese doctor performed the pleurodesis through thoracotomy.   
«I was afraid you wouldn’t answer, I didn’t know what you were doing.»  
«Oh, come on. You just wanted to see with your own eyes» replied Yuuri. The nurse handed him a 9,3 mm tube.  
«Well, I don’t think I had the best timing though. What happened?»  
None of them raised his head from their operating field. A first-year intern of Pichit’s – the same to whom Yuuri had dropped the stapler-butt man – was ready to assist him with the aspirator as soon as the Thai doctor reached the leaked blood. The Japanese man searched for the right words to use in order to stay on the vague. They both knew the patient wasn’t the only thing the nurses and the other interns were focused on.  
«My sister probably told our dad about that thing we did together. The big boss, you know» finally said.  
«Uhm, that’s interesting» said Pichit, his voice muffled from the mask. «And what did you two do?»  
«I already told you. Nothing extreme, it’s just that he doesn’t want us to do such a thing. We’re not supposed to do it.»  
«Yeah, but you’re not even sure she actually told him. Aspire here» answered the other intern. «Plus, I’m pretty sure you should worry that the rumor doesn’t reach your mom. She’s far worse than your dad.»  
Yuuri supposed Pichit was referring to doctor Baranovskaya, just like Victor did. But once again, he wasn’t one hundred percent convinced. He doubted chief Feltsman would have kept that kind of secret to the neurosurgery chief, who happened to be his ex-wife and still exert a certain power on him. She was a scary woman, not because she was authoritative or was an absolute genius removing impossible tumors and all, but because she looked at you and you couldn’t hide anything from her. Yuuri remembered a thing that happened at his second year, when he got to see a temporal lobectomy. He had just finished his night shift and was really tired, but he absolutely wanted to witness Baranovskaya’s work. However, after the surgery – during which he didn’t even touch a dilator – she cordially reminded him with a low voice that she was not an idiot and that the next lie would have been his last. Yuuri did keep that in mind.  
«You don’t have an incestuous affair with your sister, right?» asked Pichit’s first year intern all of a sudden.  
«No, he has an affair with my hamster. Aspire here» answered Pichit.

Yuuri added notes and papers to his patient’s file with the usual maximum care. He checked every detail, making sure letters and numbers were unmistakable.   
He hadn’t realized he had been folded on himself for like three quarters of an hour, and his neck and back began to hurt just when his pager rang: they needed him at the ER due to another accident - the second that week, and he was on the file of that accident right in that moment.  
He arrived at the ambulance entrance just when Mila Babicheva and Seung-gil Lee were putting on their ER scrubs. He wore one himself, then silently offered his neck to Mila to tie the knot, and she did it in an automatic gesture, then they put on their gloves and went out.  
In the foggy, humid air of an average rainy day of November, doctors Victor Nikiforov and Christophe Giacometti were amiably chatting, waiting for their interns to come.  
«What do we have?» asked Mila, fixing the latex glove on her fingers.  
«Gas explosion in a house with five people» answered Giacometti, never depriving a single word of his charm. He had blond, curly hair short cut, bright green eyes and short, unkempt beard. He was some noticeable centimeters higher than Victor, but also sturdier.  
«There are burns for all tastes just for our plastic surgeons» added Victor, referring to Giacometti and Seung-gil «And also frightened kids. One of them is a cardiopath subject too.»  
After two minutes, six more doctors arrived, three of them were interns: Emil Nekola, a Czech guy from traumatology with unrealistically voluminous hair, Pichit, Michele Crispino - Sara’s twin - from neurosurgery with his sister, and Georgi Popovich from plastic surgery – he seemed to have a hurry expression on his face but no one understood why . His hair was unrealistic just like Nekola’s.  
The sixth doctor was the one Yuuri hoped would never come: the head of neurosurgery, Lilia Baranovskaya.  
She had dark brown hair pulled back in a tight high chignon and long-eyelashed green eyes which indiscriminately fulminated anyone who directly looked at them. Her face was always printed with a strict and fierce expression, and the very features of her face didn’t help with giving another impression - a long figure with high cheekbones and big lips, constantly bent down.  
Yuuri took a step backwards, almost hiding behind Mila as the attendant made her way to the other two. He knew however, despite hoping to go unnoticed, that nothing could escape her eyes.  
«I hope you’re not wasting my time, Nikiforov» she said with her strong Russian accent, reserving particular hostility towards Victor, who made an ironic smile.  
«I hope someone’s getting here with their head opened in half and the cerebral arteries spilling out the last drops of blood in system, I guess» he replied in a quizzical tone.  
Yuuri saw Giacometti’s amused smile for half a second before it vanished, but Baranovskaya was staring at the parking entrance, without deigning the two attendants of the slightest glimpse.  
The first ambulance finally arrived to them, siren screaming and throwing blue and red reflexes around like a lighthouse gone mad.  
The first patient was a woman with really bad burns all over her body – this grade at first sight. Giacometti took her with him and his interns. From the second ambulance, two children came out, one with her blonde hair turned red by the blood from the back of her head; the other was Victor’s cardiopath child. He had an oxygen mask and had already had an arrest before getting to the hospital. The third ambulance carried a man and a teenager with lighter burns and other traumas.  
The paramedic told Victor about the kid’s general status as Yuuri and Mila followed the stretcher inside one of the rooms in the ER.  
The child was nine years old and had a heart murmur which was diagnosed just three days before - it mysteriously caused problems all of a sudden, but it didn’t look like it was involved with the gas explosion.  
Victor ordered a bunch of exams, but before he could get the results of any of it, the heart arrested again, and after ten minutes of struggle to reanimate the kid, they took him to the operating room. The attendant suspected of some congenital malformation, due to a weird whistle he heard auscultating the heart, in correspondence of the mitral valve. In fact, when they opened up, he had to substitute it.  
For all that time, Yuuri just followed his orders, from attendant to intern. He put his hands where Victor wanted them, he moved when Victor wanted, he talked when Victor asked, but never took the initiative.   
He observed as the heart surgeon diligently handled the surgical instruments, cutting, placing, sewing.  
Victor only looked at him when he was done. Before that, Yuuri was just a name, a code to get something done, nothing less and nothing more. So when the Russian man’s eyes placed in his, initially laughing for the good job just made, his expression flickered.   
He went dead serious all of a sudden, ignoring the clap from latex-wrapped hands. Yuuri exchanged his look, but in his eyes there was the unfinished conversation they had earlier that day.  
Victor did remember that as soon as he glanced at his boyfriend.

  
«A great surgery» said Yuuri, sipping a cup of hot chocolate. It wasn’t the case for an easy-fattening subject, but he just had such a long, exhausting day. «They say he fainted because of rheumatic fever and that his mom forgot about the kitchen to help him.»   
Victor sat on his side in the driver’s seat, staring motionless at his own cup, one hand in the pocket of his coat, his chin hidden in his wool scarf. He seemed thoughtful , and not amused at all by the compliment he probably heard the most in his life.  
«I see you’re angry, no need to try to hide it» he said instead.  
«I’m not hiding it at all» replied the other. The atmosphere started to grow scorching from frosty. «You’re the one that’s been forgetting it all day as if it wasn’t like I asked you something and you did the opposite.»  
«I had to ignore it, since I’m a surgeon!»  
«No, you don’t!» answered Yuuri, raising his voice over Victor’s. «You didn’t ignore it, you forgot it!»  
Victor made a nervous laughter and shrugged. «Did you expect me to talk about it while I was opening up the chest and heart of a nine-year-old in font of a gallery and an operating room full of people?»  
«I just thought the argument would have upset you a little, at least.»  
«Yuuri, I am upset with it» Victor’s voice was a bit softer. «But if I let myself get overwhelmed by feelings, I get distracted, and being distracted for a surgeon means he could kill someone.»  
Yuuri did not raise his eyes from his hands. He lowered the window and let the frozen air chill his mind as silence fell again on them. It was like he started to think again: how could Victor show his disappointment over a thing that had to be kept a secret? It was paradoxical, and he himself had got mad for it. Maybe he was just really tired and tensed up, but the truth was probably that he tried to release all the feelings of insecurity.  
Was Victor actually into him? The first time ever he had spoken to Yuuri, it seemed like he had been thinking about it for a while - it was his first day and the attendant already knew his name, because he had looked for him.  
«I know what you mean» he said after the long silence as the vapor and the heat abandoned his drink. «I’m sorry I got mad at you. This just really stresses me out.»  
Victor hesitated for a moment before asking: «What? Our relationship stresses you out?»  
«No, no no no no» Yuuri hurried to say. «Our relationship makes me happy. It the external circumstances.»  
«Which is why I’d like to tell Yakov about it.»  
«And then all the hospital will know» Yuuri reminded to him. «And the interns will start to think that any surgery I get is because you patronize me. And they will start asking why on earth the gorgeous, handsome, fairest Victor Nikiforov chose me.»  
Yuuri’s voice almost cracked, but he managed to finish his sentence. He didn’t look at Victor as he replied.  
«Well,they could ask the same thing in reverse. You don’t go around picking up guys. When two people fall in love, they choose one another.»  
Yuuri finally stared at Victor. Did he consider carefully his words? He looked at him with a weird beacon of light in his eyes. His heart skipped a heartbeat and then rushed like a racehorse in a field of grass.  
«What did you say?» came out of Yuuri’s mouth in a mild whisper.  
Victor quickly closed his eyes a couple times and held his breath for a moment before speaking again.  
«I’m in love with you» he said, looking at the other like a hurt animal. «I feel like kissing you anytime I get the chance, I want to listen to you talking about poodles all day long, I want to see you choking on your drink as you laugh, and I also want to hold you crying if you ever need that. When I thought about the future, I always saw myself as one of the greatest surgeons in the world. I’ve seen myself making huge discoveries, performing impossible surgeries with brand new techniques. And then one day at work, I happened to try and see who I could figure behind me as I did all those things.»  
His voice cracked as his eyes filled with tears and his breath became labored. «I saw no one. There was no one behind me. For all my life I’ve been told that I was talented, that I was smart, that I was handsome, that I was strong and tenacious; every single lover I’ve had told me all those things, but still, no one was behind me.»  
He was completely falling apart by then. He was sobbing heavily and his face was deformed with the expression of sorrow as he hold tight the handlebars of the car, knuckles white and cheeks red.  
«I suddenly saw you behind me. Because you told me I was considerate, because you hold my hand without demanding anything else. Because you want this to be a secret so that you won’t loose it, because you don’t care about showing me as your lover as long as I’m your lover. This is why I’m in love with you.»  
Yuuri didn’t move a muscle: he was overwhelmed with feelings, a jumble of opposite emotions: fear, agitation, joy, and also gratefulness. The man that was crying like an child in front of him had just showed him his most sacred side of himself, the most intimate, and he told him that he made him at least a bit happier. He didn’t promise to give the moon to him or to make him rich or famous or skilled. He just told him that he was better because of Yuuri. And to Yuuri, it was like he gave him the whole world in a tiny glass for him to drink.  
«I love you too» came Yuuri’s answer. «I can’t describe my emotions with any other word, and maybe it’s too soon, but it doesn’t matter. If it’s love, I will say it again in ten and twenty and a thousand years. If it’s not, well... I’m in love with you right now, and it is something that deserves to be said.»  
Yuuri leaned closer to wipe out Victor’s tears. He had calmed down a bit, just enough to stop the sobbing. The heart surgeon took his lover’s hand, and the intern caressed his cheek. They leaned their heads on the seats and waited until it was too late to be there any longer.

The following five days and a half were the greatest Yuuri had had since a crazy amount of time. He made successful surgeries, received compliments from various attendants and also some of the other interns did the same through jokes. He talked more to the nurses and other colleagues and found himself to enjoy it, he started hanging out with them, and that was not something insignificant. They chatted at lunch, during small breaks, in the galleries watching cool surgeries.   
It was like he just discovered the world existed. A fulfilling sensation, as if his lungs had just filled with fresh air.  
A sensation that lasted five days and a half.

  
«Doctor Nikiforov, do you want me to declare the time of death?» asked Sara Crispino, turning off the monitor connected to Nikolai Plisetsky’s motionless heart.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't hate me.  
> Love Georgi instead! <3


	5. I'm just holding on for tonight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> «Just drive me there tonight» insisted Yuuri with a pitiable face. «It’s not an excuse to avoid the party; indeed I’ll come with you tomorrow if you help me with this, and I’ll witness Sara getting Mila laid.»  
> «Fine. Deal» sentenced Pichit, getting back to his things.  
> Yuuri folded his head with surprise. «That’s it? No threat nor blackmailing?»  
> «Do you want me to?»  
> «Absolutely not. Deal.»

No surprise at all when Yuuri stared at the umpteenth vain attempt to contact Victor on his phone screen.  
He went to chief Feltsman - just as a heart surgery intern of course - and asked where he had gone, and found out he had got a two weeks permit for illness.   
«Now, I don’t know how he could have contracted a two-weeks-convalescence disease from one day to the other without dying, and I’m a doctor» said Pichit, doing zapping through channels as usual.   
They were both sat on the couch of their apartment, after another long day of work - at least for Yuuri. It was maybe the first time ever he had been fitting in with the people in the hospital, making friends and having enjoyable chats between one surgery and the other, but his work was still stressful.  
«Of course he’s not ill» said Yuuri, throwing his phone on a pillow beside him. «I thought he would have at least told me he didn’t want to talk.»  
«I understand that it was a close friend and all» Pichit insisted. «But he’s not a newbie. He knows surgeries always have risks and that people die.»  
«It wasn’t even his fault, the ictus. It’s simply a thing that can happen.»  
«Well, I haven’t seen the seam but...»  
«Pichit, they were perfect.»  
«Apparently not completely.»  
«He was seventy-three!»  
«Okay, stop» the Thai doctor finally said. «I don’t want to fight with you over a seam. You know where he lives; go get him and talk to him.»  
Yuuri didn’t answer, but instinctively glanced at his phone to see if it lighted up. A gesture that didn’t go unnoticed by Pichit.  
«Okay I’m driving you there right now» he asserted, jumping on his feet.  
The Japanese man obstinately refused to follow him, pointing out that it was ten pm.  
«I don’t care» the other replied. «I know that look you have on your face, it’s a guilty look!»  
«Pichit, he will call me back when he wants t...»  
«He won’t, Yuuri!» Pichit exclaimed loudly. «You will spend each and every evening on the couch staring at a phone waiting for a damn notification from him, you’ll go to work and run to the showcase to check if he’s inserted anywhere and pretend you’re not upset when none of this will happen!»  
Yuuri didn’t answer as his friend glared at him with his hands on his hips and an angry expression on his face. They stayed still like that for a lot of seconds before Pichit gave up, threw the remote control on the couch and went to his room.  
Yuuri did want to get angry at Victor, but he just couldn’t. He felt like he was too much, like he had no right to step in his pain for the loss, nor comfort him.  
He was angry at himself instead.

«Yuuri, I don’t think we did anything wrong» said Sara as she sipped her soda, elbows on the table. «We just kept an eye on him. Nikiforov did all the diagnosis and surgery and told us what to give him.»  
A pause of silence.  
«And» she added «It was a normal risk of the surgery. He was seventy-three years old as well.»  
The Japanese intern felt like one side of himself - the conscious one, the one that was still doubting how Victor could have told him he loved him - was talking to him through Sara, but he didn’t think anything like “She said that too, so it must be true.”  
«Do you believe those were his own words last night?» intruded Pichit with his mouth full of tuna sandwich. «Which side are you on?» he added, referring to his roommate.  
«On Victor’s side in any case, of course» he spilled out with an angry tone without even thinking. When he realized the hint he had accidentally dropped with Sara, he went back on his salad.  
«You’re pretty loyal» she commented in fact, giving him the best inquisitive look she had.  
«I’m just feeling sorry for him.»  
«Yeah...» she added in a low voice. «Anyway, Michele and I are throwing a party!»  
Yuuri almost choked and sounded way too much hurt: «A party? Right now?»  
Pichit kicked his leg from under the table. He was starting to get pissed by Yuuri’s almost total absence of control.  
«It sounds like a great idea!» he spoke instead of his friend, who filled his mouth with salad, secretly thanking him for covering his butt.  
«Yeah, we invited doctors and nurses.»  
«When did I loose all my non-doctors friends?» asked Pichit hearing that.   
«Welcome to medical school» she answered laughing. «Oh, Mila! Georgi!» she added,waving her arm at someone behind Yuuri. Two other interns joined their table, Mila from the third year of traumatology and Georgi Popovich from the fifth year of plastic surgery. She sat next to Sara and the other followed her.  
«What’s wrong?» Sara asked to Mila after she sighed, putting a hand on her back.  
The red-haired woman shrugged. «It’s Victor, he won’t come out his house» she said playing with the fork in her food.  
«We tried anything, but it was all useless» added Georgi, a black haired man with a sharp face, blue eyes and deep voice. Sometimes Yuuri came across his instagram profile, and checked his pictures out of curiosity whether he had finally uploaded a photo without his girlfriend or not. He constantly remained disappointed.  
«Plus, Yura’s not helping at all. I’m afraid one of the two will get killed if they stay alone in the same house for too long» said Mila nodding.  
«Wait, you mean Plisetsky’s grandson?» asked Yuuri with panic in his voice.  
«Yeah.»  
«Are they staying together now?» intruded Sara, sharing Yuuri’s concern. She had known the kid as well, and she perfectly knew how he was hot-headed. Maybe that was the reason Victor disappeared from public life.  
«They’re third cousins» explained Georgi, unlocking his phone as he bit his sandwich. «Yura has no parents nor uncles and now his grandfather died. Victor is his closest relative; I honestly don’t know how things will turn out.»  
It was like Yuuri fell from space, and he felt the same terror he probably would have experienced if he had been crashing to the ground from the atmosphere.   
Victor was now stuck in being a parent to a teenager kid who had just lost the last piece of his family, after entrusting it to Victor himself. Now he did understand very well why Mila was worried.  
The new comers’ pagers rang together, and the two doctors both yelled at the same time.  
«We just left!» complained the woman as Georgi put the rest of his almost whole sandwich in his mouth. «Well, she’ll have to get us to the operating room to make this up, at least.»  
They left, saying goodbye to their colleagues hastily and leaving their trays on the table.  
«So, are you in or not?» Sara low-voiced asked, grabbing Pichit’s forearm and leaning on the table. «You don’t wanna miss the moment I finally win Mila’s heart.»  
The Thai doctor smiled, his straw between his teeth.  
«Sign us the fuck up.»

«I really don’t wanna go to that party» Yuuri confessed, without summoning Pichit’s surprised face.  
They took their equipment from the shelves in the catchall, Yuuri a box with small tubes and syringes and Pichit some new packages of sterilized gloves.  
«You need that» Pichit replied, his head lowered on a piece of paper on which he had written down what he needed. «And you began to get involved in social things just now after four years, don’t waste it.»  
«You know, I should probably go to Victor and check on him.»  
«That kid will be there too. Are you sure you know how to go unnoticed?»  
«It doesn’t matter» replied the heart surgery intern. «I’m his boyfriend and I still haven’t gone to see him. I would be very ashamed if there was someone besides you two to be ashamed with.»  
«Oh don’t worry, you can be ashamed in my presence if you want.»  
«Pichit.»  
The Thai doctor raised his head and looked at him with an arching eyebrow and a doubtful expression that carried a rhetorical question.  
«Just drive me there tonight» insisted Yuuri with a pitiable face. «It’s not an excuse to avoid the party; indeed I’ll come with you tomorrow if you help me with this, and I’ll witness Sara getting Mila laid.»  
«Fine. Deal» sentenced Pichit, getting back to his things.  
Yuuri folded his head with surprise. «That’s it? No threat nor blackmailing?»  
«Do you want me to?»  
«Absolutely not. Deal.»

«I might have changed my mind.»  
«Blackmail. Just remember this word when you’re doubting.»  
«Wow, thanks Mother Mary» answered Yuuri, rubbing his hands.  
It was half past nine when Pichit parked his car some meters before Victor’s house, to avoid Makkachin noticing and barking, depriving Yuuri of the last minutes he needed to get himself together before doing it. His friend was silently waiting on his side, leaning his hands on the handlebars, tapping with his thumbs.  
The darkness in the avenue was rived by thick globes of suffused yellow light spreading from the street lamps, drawing wriggling black shapes behind trees and road signs. The front sides of the houses were in penumbral, except for some little lamps on the doors or the lights from sporadic windows.   
In the night fresh air, the atmosphere was silent and glooming, pressing against Yuuri’s chest with urge. He wouldn’t have described that sensation as a “bad feeling”, but surely it wasn’t good at all.  
He was afraid that Victor rejected him, that he got mad at him or wrote his name on a black list. He didn’t even know exactly what to tell him - he couldn’t just walk in, check if he was hydrated and fed and walk out.  
“It’ll be fine” he said to himself as he put his hand on the handle. “Just go in there.” After all, he had the same feeling on their first date, and they ended up saying that they loved each other. It was just normal to be beside your lover when he’s mourning. What should he have feared?  
«Don’t wait for me, I’ll call a taxi» he said as he stepped on the sidewalk and closed the car door.  
«Are you sure? There’s a bar with free wi-fi somewhere around here» asked Pichit, leaning toward Yuuri to look at him from his seat.  
«Nah, go home. This could take a while.»  
«Don’t hesitate to call me if you need anything» replied the other. «Us doctor are used to get woken up in the middle of the night in panicking circumstances.  
Yuuri laughed and made his way to Victor’s house. Pichit surpassed him in the car and briefly honked to wave him off.  
The heart surgeon’s car was parked in its usual place in front of the basement; all the light from the windows of the upper floor were off, and the ceilings behind the ones on the ground floor were pulled together so Yuuri was afraid that everyone was asleep.  
When he got to the door, he slightly knocked, feeling his heartbeat running wild in his own ears as they stretched, catching every sound that waved near them. He eared some ticking on the floor and recognized Makkachin’s exited paws jumping in impatience. After maybe a good minute, just before he knocked again, the sound of dragged steps emerged from the silence, on their way to the door, but stopped right behind it. Yuuri imagined someone was checking on him through the spy-hole. He got no answer but more silence, so he knocked again.  
«Victor, I heard you. Open the door» he said with condescending voice.  
«I don’t look very good right now» he barely heard from the inside.  
«That’s why I came. Open the door Vitya, I’m freezing.»  
The door slowly opened. Victor was hiding behind it, showing only his right eye to Yuuri.  
«Can I come in?» asked the intern with hesitation.  
The blond man stared at him as if he was seriously considering to shut the door again, but finally stepped back and let him in. When it finally closed behind him, Yuuri saw Victor in full version. He was wearing large clothes, sweat pants and a T-shirt, and looked shabby in it. Not the fake shabbiness of girls taking selfies in their beds in the morning with make-up on and their hair perfectly brushed, but a shabbiness that reflected in the empty look in his eyes, in his skin, paler than usual, in his opaque and messy hair stuck on his forehead, in his body wet with alcohol. He wasn’t the gorgeous, fascinating and successful man that worked at the Detroit General Hospital, but a miserable and pitiful Victor.  
«Are you drunk?» asked Yuuri in the dark, absently petting Makkachin’s head who cheered him waving his tail. The only light in the whole house was the one that came from a street lamp through a window on the back side of the living room, far away in the night.  
«No» Victor drawled and his boyfriend didn’t believe him, obviously. He entered the living and saw the coffee table and the kitchen counter overflowing with food packages and leftovers, piles of dirty dishes in the sink and a file of papers that looked important thrown on a chair. Beside the legs of the sofa, empty glasses and half-full bottles of alcohol lied dangerously in dog’s range. Speaking of which, as Makkachin licked and sniffed his hand, Yuuri noticed that his nose felt dry.  
«Did you gave him water? Did you drink water?» he asked Victor, who followed him staggering, but he didn’t wait nor need his answer as he looked for the poodle’s bowl.  
«I drank» answered the attendant, his foreign accent and consonants pronounced so strong out of alcohol. «I gave him water... Sometime ago.»  
Yuuri put the bowl full of water in front of Makkachin, and the dog eagerly swallowed every drop in it.  
«I take care of him well» Victor added, almost crying as he put his arms around Yuuri’s shoulders - at least, attempted to do so with his bad coordination in the dark. «Don’t take him away, I love him!»  
«Nobody’s ever gonna take Makkachin away from you, Victor» patiently answered the other man, upholding him with his body to carry him to the couch.  
Victor heavily fell on it and stretched his legs out of its length. With one’s nose near to the other’s mouth, the piercing and nauseating smell of alcohol was almost unbearable for Yuuri, who wandered how much his boyfriend had drunk while seriously considering going to the hospital and taking something to give him intravenously to get him together.  
«Are you and Makkachin alone?»  
«Y-Yuri is upstairs and don’t go out his room never» drawled Victor.  
Yuuri had stupidly hoped for one moment that Mila and Georgi were wrong, that Plisetsky’s grandson wasn’t under his care now. He secretly hoped that for the kid’s sake in the first place, seeing Victor’s current state, but he didn’t dare explicitly thinking it.  
He had never thought he would have seen him in that state: sputtering in prey of alcohol - vodka and rum, he stated from the bottles near the couch - an adult man, highly established in a rough field of work such as surgery, in which you had to deal with people living and dying in your hands. It must have been an enormous stress, something Yuuri could never imagine, if Victor had such a breakdown. After all, Yuuri thought, being always gorgeous and affable was probably hard: the hospital was always a rabble of all kind of weird or annoying or weird and annoying people, demanding to be assisted in their own way, telling the doctors and the nurses how to do their jobs. Yuuri had learned that the very first week, when a woman complained about how the disinfectant burned on her daughter’s injury. And that was only the point of the iceberg.  
He desperately wanted to do something to alleviate his lover’s sorrow, something that would prevent him from turning to vodka to get through the day. If Victor had been stuck in the house with the boy locked upstairs all those days without seeing anyone, Yuuri did understand his reaction though. The boy probably accused him of so many bad things. And despite being a grown man, Victor wasn’t a parent, and if he couldn’t handle it on his own, he really couldn’t be blamed at all.  
In the anteroom of Yuuri’s mind, a wild idea began to flutter: he could try and talk to the teen and explain him that it wasn’t Victor’s fault, that the surgeon himself was enormously suffering for it and that they had to stand together to make it through. It was a wild consideration indeed, considering the immediate hostility the boy had reserved for him since their very first meeting.  
Still, after letting Victor slide in a profound sleep, picking up bottles and cleaning up the mess, Yuuri had seriously been considering the idea all night long.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How does a collection of short stories about Pichit blackmailing Yuuri sound?  
> Remember to leave a comment and you can contact me on Tumblr with the same username if you have any questions ♡  
> Thanks for reading!!!


	6. Act Two: the Lovers are Discovered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> «No, no no no no» she said with those Italian heavy-opened “o” sounds, waving her hands in disapproval. «Do not bother me with your gay drama. I need to focus on my lesbian drama.» And the Italian intern vanished as well, her black hair floating almost like a personification of her current feelings.

When Victor woke up, the house was immersed in the fresh light of the morning. The luminosity laid on everything like a soft caress, filling his eyes and soul with an unusual feel of serenity as he savored the air without finding any trace of alcohol. He still needed a shower though.

Makkachin always used to lick him in the face in the morning to wake him up, but he hadn’t been doing that for the last few days; the doctor anyway, had got used to open his eyes at that time by then, even though he missed the poodle’s greeting him in another day.

He moved, feeling his back heavy from the not-so-comfortable sleep on the couch, and he was about to stretch it when he noticed he wasn’t alone.

Yuuri laid on the other side of the sofa with Victor’s legs on his lap. His head was leaning on his right shoulder in a very uncomfortable angle that would have given him an annoying cervical headache for sure. His mouth was slightly opened and he was deeply asleep, his hair messily falling on his face and his glasses in his hand. Victor moved carefully not to wake him up and got up from the couch. In that moment he was very grateful for his tolerance for alcohol, allowing him not to suffer the hangover. He felt the bad smell of his own breath coming out his mouth and immediately went to the bathroom to brush his teeth. When he came back, Makkachin moved close to him waggling his tail and earned a good scratch behind the ear. Once back in the kitchen, the surgeon checked the clock and found out that Yuuri should have been to work an hour ago. He didn’t wake him up though; Phichit would have covered him up without too much effort.

He cooked some bacon, scrambled eggs and toasts for three people, and when Yuuri woke up to the delicious smell of breakfast, his boyfriend was handing him a cup of smoking coffee.

«Thank you» said the intern with his hoarse voice kneaded in saliva. He glanced at the timepiece on the wall and jumped on his feet.

«Holy shit!» the curse leaked from his lips before he could pull himself together, so he immediately apologized. «I need to go to work!»

«Don’t worry, Phichit will have your back» Victor reassured him, sipping his coffee and keeping his look low on his cup as if not to look directly at his lover.

Yuuri thought of how good Phichit was at keeping secrets - he even kept Yuuri’s secrets better than Yuuri himself - but Victor’s behavior didn’t go unnoticed.

«I’m sorry if I stayed, last night» he began to apologize, attributing that attitude to the last evening events «it’s just that I finished tidying up here, I planned to sit just two minutes before calling a taxi but I must have fallen asleep...»

«It’s totally fine, you have nothing to be sorry for. Actually, I should be thanking you» replied Victor, putting some eggs and bacon in two plates, giving his back to Yuuri. «And... I’m really ashamed about yesterday. It’s okay if you want to leave.»

The Japanese man stared at his boyfriend’s back with incredulity. He almost perceived Victor’s frustration without even looking at his face, he saw the tense in his shoulders.

«Vitya...» he said softly, moving close to him. Yuuri leaned his hand on the other’s forearm, and he saw Victor’s hands trembling, his veins getting blue and defined.

The heart surgeon suddenly started crying. His shoulders arched back as he stared at the ceiling, baring his teeth, trying to suck his tears back in. Yuuri grabbed his neck and pulled his head against his throat, caressing his back with a strong pressure in his hand. Victor started sobbing silently against his skin, tears falling down on the black-haired man’s t-shirt, hands gripped at it.

«I understand, you don’t have to explain anything» said Yuuri, barely holding his own crying in. He kept pressing his lover’s head against himself, scratching it between his platinum hair.

«I wanted to call you, I _needed_ to» Victor whined between sobs. «I am so terrified that you leave me!»

«That’s not gonna happen, I’m not leaving you in this trouble» the intern reassured him.

Victor poured out all his stress, his sorrow, his insecurity and his fear in Yuuri’s arms as they hold him tight and cradled him. Both of them had no idea how to act from that moment on, and both struggled to find an answer, but the truth was that none of them was prepared to do anything like that in the first place. They were adults, but not too much. They had always had responsibility for themselves only - Victor had taken care of Makkachin max - so they didn’t actually know what to say or do to a teenager whose last member of family had died, stuck in a completely foreign continent without knowing anyone besides a woman and a man who worked at the hospital and were way too much older than him to hang out with, and the surgeon who had broken his promise to save his grandfather’s life. Furthermore, Yuuri had the nauseous and horrific fear that Victor would be forced to move back to Russia, and the only idea of it scared him at a point where he didn’t dare thinking about it for more than one tenth of a second.

He was so deeply absorbed in his thoughts that he jumped when he heard the doorbell. Victor sniffed, rubbing his tears away as he glanced at the door and then looked at Yuuri with a confused expression, but the Japanese man really had no idea who it could be. Certainly it wasn’t Phichit.

The attendant quickly threw some water on his face to hide his cry-red cheeks, then answered the door. Yuuri waited for him in the kitchen, but since there only was a counter, he could perfectly see everything.

And chief Feltsman could perfectly see him as well.

Victor’s voice died in his throat as he realized what had just happened. He stood in the entrance with a stone face, a horrific shade of terror painted on his face, because that wasn’t how he wanted to tell him. His expression though was nothing compared to Yuuri’s, who just wanted to fall on the ground and scream as death occurred.

The surgery chief had half of his face covered by a black hat which actually was meant to hide the wide clearing on the back of his head, from where white hair had fallen a long time ago by then, but wrath spread from his eyes just as clearly as the sun shining in the sky. Yuuri’s blood froze in his veins as he realized how grossly misleading that must have looked: him standing in Victor’s kitchen early in the morning in that messy state.

«Yakov!» exclaimed Victor as he shook himself, then proceeded to tell him something in Russian, something of which the intern didn’t understand a word, but seeing how his boyfriend raised his hands in a conciliating manner and Feltsman rolled his eyes, he understood that Vitya was trying to solve the unsolvable.

The surgery chief answered back in Russian as well, but “Yuri” was the only understandable word. Indeed, Victor stepped aside to let him through and cross the living to reach the stairs to the second floor. As he walked, Feltsman stared at Yuuri with a stone cold face, without any consideration.

«It really isn’t what it looks like» Yuuri found the strength to say, gripping the marble of the kitchen counter so tight that his knuckles went white and his nails bent.

«It seems like you’re fine enough to come back to work, Vitya» he replied, referring to Victor but keeping his eyes locked on the other man.

«Let’s talk about it in your office today at lunch, okay?» answered the blond man, a dead serious expression, his arms dropped on his hips.

«After you install that famous pacemaker, of course» Feltsman said, speaking as Victor’s boss, implicitly threatening him.

He finally left and went upstairs, and Yuuri almost fainted when he realized he had held his breath all along.

«I’m leaving now» he said hastily, reaching for his glasses on the coffee table and his jacket on the couch. Makkachin moved close from his basket, studying Yuuri with curiosity.

«No, wait» Victor rushed to him and tried to convince him crossing his eyes, but the intern obstinately looked away. «Wait, love, I didn’t...»

«I know it’s not your fault of course» the intern burst out, interrupting Victor’s pleas as he put his hand on his cheek. «It was just... a matter of time.»

Yuuri freed himself from his lover’s heat and begging and then left, trying not to be too loud in closing the door.

 

«Dude, I tried to cover you up, but Feltsman is not...»

Phichit ran towards him as soon as he entered the ER doors, but stopped talking when he saw Yuuri’s long face.

«Hey, what happened? You two didn’t break up, did you?» the Thai doctor added, following his friend as he walked with wide steps and his head lowered like an enraged bull.

«Yo, dude!» Phichit grabbed his arm and Yuuri immediately shook it, causing his friend to actually get worried. The heart surgery intern, in the most absolute way possible, wasn’t the man to act like that.

«It happened that I perfectly know where the chief is!»

Yuuri couldn’t even say Feltsman’s name, but he wasn’t angry at him. He wasn’t angry at Victor either. He was angry at circumstances, feeling like a diabetic kid in a bake shop: he would eat all the pastries he wanted, but there would be major consequences after it, and Yuuri didn’t really have an answer to the question whether it was worth it or not.

Victor made him feel comfortable in situations in which he would have never been okay before, and that inevitably led him to be more successful in life, both on the social and professional sides. But the intern had known from the beginning that if the whole thing ever happened to become a public matter, he would’ve lost everything in a second: his boss would consider him unreliable – or, most probably, just fire him – his colleagues would think that he got any surgery thanks to his powerful boyfriend, and since they were the only friends he had, he would end up alone, probably pretending not to be depressed when Pichit would come back home and illustrate his interesting day.

But… _Victor_.

That clause echoed softly in Yuuri’s mind, almost like a shy and scared whisper of the wind that came right in the center of the tornado in his head, when everything got silent and heavy.

«Oh my God. He discovered you.»

Phichit’s supposition didn’t need his friend’s confirmation, so the two doctors both became quiet. In any other situation, the Thai man would have tried to make some jokes and lift Yuuri’s spirit up, but he just couldn’t find anything in that moment as they walked to the interns’ room.

The Japanese man changed his clothes in the quiet company of his friend, then went to the counter to take his patient’s files. He didn’t say anything when he parted from Phichit and calmly began his working day.

He was in the eye of the storm, but Victor’s name stopped being murmured. All he could do was wait for things to happen.

 

«I don’t feel tired or breathless or anything» the twenty-year-old girl gladly announced to doctor Katsuki as he auscultated her heart.

«Yeah, it seems like you’re just fine» the doctor agreed. He put his stethoscope around his neck after finishing his examination, then wrote some notes on the file of the patient he had operated two days before. «Let’s just make one last exam; I’m sure it’ll be perfect though. Tomorrow I’ll send you home and you’ll just need a week of rest.»

The girl’s parents thanked him, and Yuuri left the room with a nod and a smile which vanished as soon as he reached the hallway, direct to the on-call room until his pager rang. It was from Mila, in the ER. He turned around and walked to the opposite direction, the one you had to follow to reach Feltsman’s office. He didn’t actually care of passing near it. Avoiding it wouldn’t fix things and time wouldn’t help the chief forget the matter for sure. It was just pointless.

When the window appeared on the wall on his right, he kept on acting casually. He simply glanced at it the way everyone else did, but that action caused his cold armor of apathy to crack and fall apart.

Was it Victor? The platinum-haired man sit in front of the surgery chief, talking to him with so much confidence in his gestures? Well, he did say he would talk to Feltsman at lunch.

Yuuri diverted his look and walked faster. No questions. No suppositions. No feelings.

Half of the ER was crowded with nurses running right, left and center. Many of them had blood on their scrubs and everyone was shouting orders to someone who would answer shrugging. When the doctor came in, a black-haired woman, who had been working there since many years before he even thought about becoming a doctor, grabbed his arm and led him to the room where Mila was covered in fresh blood.

«Yuuri!» she exclaimed, a glimmer of hope flickering in her eyes «Where’s Nikiforov?»

«I… I don’t know» he answered as the people around the bed let him through. All he saw was a mass of pulsing red liquid in which many tubes were inserted. His clothes became wet as soon as he put his hands on the patient.

«What the hell happened?!» he asked Mila.

«Can you believe he was hit by a train?» she asked back.

Actually, it was a big question: reducing a man in a state of red sludge wasn’t an easy task, but also surviving to a train wasn’t really an everyday thing.

«Keep him alive as I find out where the fuck every attendant is» she said, taken by an impulse of wild rage. She took her gloves off, but they hadn’t helped to keep her hands dry.

«I don’t think Nikiforov is available» Yuuri said without even thinking.

«What the hell are you even saying? He _must_ be! Along with the other three people I called!» she exclaimed, glancing at him as if he was crazy as she ran away, pager in one hand.

It looked like the universe was willing to kill people in order to get Yuuri in front of Victor.

 

Yuuri had known what was coming. He didn’t know how to face it, but he was ready. He had thought about it all day long, through the surgery until dinner, and now he was calmly consuming his cold lunch in the canteen where a few other doctors and nurses had stopped after spending lunchtime in the operating room.

So when Mila asked him if there was something between himself and the Russian doctor, the intern’s answer came so neat that it almost sounded sarcastic. He didn’t even wander how the rumor had spread.

«We’ve been dating for quite a while. We’re a couple, but it won’t last because the chief found out. I’m waiting for someone to be killed or fired.»

Mila stopped sipping her drink, straw leaning on her lower lip as she stared at him open-mouthed.

«W-Wha…» she tried to say, but the words died in her throat.

«No point in hiding it now. I don’t even want to know how you knew it.»

«It was my own suspect! Because I know Victor and I understand when something’s going on!»

Yuuri kept on eating his bento without even raising his look on her. The red-haired doctor leaned closer to him on the table, lowering her voice to a displeasured whisper.

«Do _not_ abandon him Katsuki, I’m warning you.»

Well, that tone did catch the Japanese doctor’s attention.

«Relationships are a mess. There are always problems» she continued, staring at him right in the eye. «I know Victor and I know that he gives all of himself to the people he cares about. Now I know you and I know you’re a cool, quiet guy. But I swear I’m kicking your lazy ass to mother Russia and back if you give up this easily.»

«Hey peeps, what’s up?»

«Not now Sara, I’m threatening Katsuki» Mila replied, without moving a muscle nor diverting her angry look.

«Seems dangerous» commented Sara as she sat down next to the other woman. «What did you do to piss her off like this?» she asked to Yuuri.

«Nothing. _That_ is why I am pissed» answered Mila. «Anyway, I have a hot newcomer I’ve laid my eyes on. Do you know who else’s gonna get laid?»

The traumatology intern took her drink and put the straw in her mouth as she got up to leave.

«Wait, what?» asked Sara, a concerned look on her face as she slowly tasted reality. «Who is dat???» she added, giving a mad falsetto with her voice, each letter spilled out like poison.

The Italian doctor glanced at Yuuri in search for help, and he understood that if he didn’t think fast he would become the new target of Sara’s wrath.

«Y-You know you shouldn’t date first year newbies» he hastily said. The neurosurgeon seemed satisfied.

«Said the one dating an attendant» Mila spilled out, leaving Yuuri paralyzed out of surprise.

«You didn’t» he whispered.

«I just did, I thought you didn’t mind?» she teased. «And, number one, she knows everything. Number two, he’s from third year, but he just joined the program.» She turned around and left.

Sara watched her leave, keeping her hands contracted like vulture’s claws. She was still open mouthed, holding her breath, and Yuuri thought it was because of him and Victor.

«Please don’t tell anyone» he begged.

«No, no no no no» she said with those Italian heavy-opened “o” sounds, waving her hands in disapproval. «Do not bother me with _your_ gay drama. I need to focus on _my_ lesbian drama.» And the Italian intern vanished as well, her black hair floating almost like a personification of her current feelings.

«Yuuri!»

What was wrong with people that day? What did they want from him all at the same time? It was almost ridiculous. Sara hadn’t even left the canteen yet.

Victor sat on the bench next to him, his elbows leaning on the table behind his back, his head tilted towards his boyfriend.

«I don’t really know exactly why you’re mad at me, no, let me finish, or avoiding me at all, but I talked to Yakov today and I might have the solution for this.»

The attendant spoke fast without letting the intern interrupt him. He looked at him with a lock of blond hair touching his cheekbone, asking with his eyes the permission to continue. He wanted to force Yuuri to know that he was trying to fix things, but if he wasn’t ready to hear his conclusion they could wait a bit more.

In the end, the black-haired man sighed and nodded, giving his approval.

«Thanks. I wanted to send my resume to the Detroit Memorial and see if they hire me there. We won’t be colleagues anymore, technically, so Yakov…»

«No, stop right there» Yuuri interrupted him, dropping his onigiri in the bento. The rice pulped on the sushi, revealing its salmon filling.

«Are you even proposing it to me?» he asked, but the blond man remained still like a rock. «Of course I’m not fine with that! I don’t want to make this whole hospital give up a surgery god like you just because of me.»

Yuuri looked around as Victor started talking. «Wait, I don’t want people to understand things.»

«Stop saying “just” as if we’re kindergarten boyfriends» the other replied with irritation in his voice. «That’s what people do in serious relationships, _sacrifices_. Sounds familiar?»

«Oh, please, don’t say it like that when you’re the one leaving.»

«Do you want to be the one?»

«No. I don’t want it to be you either.»

«I am saying it like this because _I am_ the one, love» he replied. Yuuri’s heart softened at the hearing of it, but there were people who shouldn’t have been listening to their conversation. «Don’t you think I’m completely fine with leaving. I’m pretty familiar here, I have friends just like you.»

«Well, you’re not making this conversation any more enjoyable if you hold it against me as if I am happy about it or I asked you to do it» came Yuuri’s answer as he lowered his head on his bento. He took small grains of rice one by one with his fingers and put it in his mouth just to avoid spilling other poison.

Victor got up from the bench as if he was going to leave, but then leaned over Yuuri, putting his head near his boyfriend’s ear.

«I am trying to remind you that since I’m the one making the sacrifice, meeting me at half the road, showing your support to your lover, would be nice and appreciated, thank you very much.»

When the heart surgeon left, Yuuri was very surprised about how he hadn’t had a single pleasant conversation all day long.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, I must apologize because I've been writing "Pichit" instead of "Phichit" for all this time... I was so sure it was correct that I didn't ever doubt it...  
> Second of all, a special thanks to jaellisme on Tumblr who helps me with some of the surgery stuff!  
> Anyway, I managed to get this chapter done in time although I'm drowning in books due to my finals. Goodbye high school!  
> Remember to please leave a comment whether you liked this chapter or not in order to make me improve, and if you have any questions you can find me on Tumblr, Instagram and Twitter with the same username! And you can also check my art out there ^3^


	7. Everybody just have a good time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The thread didn’t bother the blond man, not even for a moment. He already had a back-up plan. He had hoped not to apply it, but he had known Yakov for so long he could easily predict his reaction to anything by then.  
> «I’m an adult too now, chief.»  
> The surgeon closed the door behind. He had a party to attend, after all.

 As Yuuri had already predicted, it was the worst moment ever for him to have a party.

He wasn’t a party person in the first place; he rather had enjoyed a peaceful beer with his closest friends, maybe something ordered from a cheap restaurant, a vintage movie and the freedom of throwing himself on the sofa when he got tired.

Yet there he was, a glass of rum that Phichit had placed in his hand, a totally anonymous and hastily worn blue shirt with the last buttons left open and his hair thrown back.

«Don’t just stand there doing nothing!» his Thai friend told him off, gesturing with his hands towards Yuuri’s full glass.

The Japanese man sipped the strong and burning taste of alcohol, and his lips tasted of something that itched like flames as the liquid burned through his esophagus.

«It looks like you’ll need much more of it» Phichit commented on Yuuri’s distorted face. «Let’s go find the others and get the party started!»

The heart surgery intern didn’t quite understand what his friend actually meant by getting a party started, since he was really convinced that they were already pretty deep in the celebration: drunk people were dancing all over the Crispino twins’ back garden like joyful zombies, some of them had found a comfortable place to sit and make out with strangers, and you could also see pairs leaving the crowd hand in hand with a moronic smile. The music was insanely loud – he expected the police or the neighbors to come and pay a visit – and dozens of doctors and nurses jumped all over the place to the rhythm. Yes, despite Yuuri couldn’t believe his own eyes, each and every person in his visual field worked at the hospital. Where did the dear non-medical population of Detroit go in those last four years of life?

The two interns kept on sneaking through the crowd like snakes in search for their friends, but it was Sara that found them first.

«Guys! You look handsome tonight!» she shouted in order to be heard over the music.

«I can’t believe you got a DJ! You surely know how to party!» answered Phichit with a big smile.

«Oh, he’s a friend of Mila. Actually, he’s the new intern she had a crush on, do you remember, Yuuri?» she replied talking to Yuuri, who was looking around in a desperate attempt to flee.

«I don’t think I’ll ever forget that conversation» he confessed. «I though you wouldn’t invite him though.»

«Listen, kid» Sara’s eyes lightened up like a sudden firestorm. She pointed at her red long sleeveless dress with black lace on the bustier. «Nothing can win all this stuff. I will make her bi if she’s straight; did you understand?»

«Yeah, I did» he answered. «And since I’m not really into partying tonight, at least I wanna witness your success.»

The three of them laughed, but the woman went deadly serious when Mila’s red hair flashed above the crowd in front of her. A swish of pink silk and strass slid through dancing people in an attempt to get to the other three interns.

«Una figa della Madonna» Sara said in her language, nodding to herself when the red-haired girl arrived in her glimmering dress.

«You are absolutely stunning!» she added to the other woman. «This color suits you!»

«Thanks darling. Hi boys! How are you?» Mila answered, pulling a lock of hair behind her ear, uncovering an earring with a small brilliant cut.

«Sober, and we need to fix it» answered Phichit, throwing his arm around the shoulders of a frightened Yuuri.

«Let’s go get some alcohol, dude!» Sara grabbed Mila’s waist and the four of them – one in particular being dragged – made their way to the counter set up next to the DJ console, where bottles and bottles of wine, rum, vodka, gin, juices and stuff was waiting to be poured in the next cup.

 

«Vitya, I want you to understand that I’m speaking for your own good.»

Victor kept on staring at his hands, his fingers crossed on his lap as he tortured his thumb’s cuticle, back abandoned on the chair, legs extended with casualness under the table.

Yakov instead was looking straight at him, leaning on his desk.

The semidarkness of the room allowed the heart surgeon to think better of what he’d just been told. When no one was around, the two of them simply spoke in Russian, and it almost deceived Victor that he was just having another conversation with his mentor, back in his intern years in St. Petersburg, but he wasn’t.

The hospital was silent, some nurses occasionally walked through the hallway to check on their patients, but there wasn’t any emergency. The operating rooms were empty until a bad accident happened.

«I already told you this morning. You know why Lilia and I divorced a year after I became surgery chief. Actually things had begun to be unbearable way earlier, and when I say unbearable I mean it.»

«The fact that it happened to you doesn’t imply that’s a general condition» Victor replied, a bit defensive, but clearly annoyed. «And we’ve been together for only a month, how can you speak of divorce already?»

«I’m telling you this because I know you only act serious when it comes to this kind of stuff!»

«So what, are you afraid he’s not taking it seriously?»

«If you date another surgeon, you won’t have time to see him outside the hospital.»

«The problem subsists with any other person on this planet – no, wait – it gets worse. I get to see him almost every day at lunch and in many other moments during our shifts; it couldn’t happen if we didn’t both work here.»

«So you’re fine with that? Getting to see him at lunch and passing through the hallway if it happens» said Yakov, trying to twist Victor’s words against him.

«You know what» Victor was furious, a vein pumping under the skin of his neck, the blood rushing to his cheeks as he stood up and checked if he had got any messages on the pager. «This whole conversation is pointless. And I’m not leaving Yuuri for pointless reasons.»

He really was sick of all that. His only priority since the very first year of college was studying, memorizing every single detail of the human body, master every step of surgical procedures, _being the first_. He had always had a good inclination for the subject, but it still sucked every drop of his time, and when he had realized that life was so much more, it was too late. He had already reached a point where he could count his beloved ones on the fingers of one single hand. Makkachin had brought him on the window of life, he kept doing that for some time a day, but it was still just _some time a day_. Victor had given up the chance of finding another person to share his time with, and the ease with which he had accepted that perspective was alarming. He didn’t even remember what it meant to love and be loved on that level, so he didn’t make a big deal out of it.

Until one night a drunk boy lost his friend in a bar in Detroit. He would always remember the way he gasped when he saw the surgeon, the way his eyes shone with a light Victor had forgotten how to feel.

He crossed the office and reached the handle on the door when the chief answered.

«Be very careful of what you do, Victor» came the warning. «You’re too precious to be fired, now connect the dots by yourself.»

The thread didn’t bother the blond man, not even for a moment. He already had a back-up plan. He had hoped not to apply it, but he had known Yakov for so long he could easily predict his reaction to anything by then.

«I’m an adult too now, chief.»

The surgeon closed the door behind. He had a party to attend, after all.

 

In the end, Yuuri did reach a point where his synapses were completely useless. He had a vague awareness of Phichit being drunk as well, but he wasn’t excessively worried about it. He knew he would always find someone of his circle of friends on the benches under a tree at the corner of the back garden, and he kept on interchanging moments of research for his lost best friend with stumbling return trips to the other interns for like half an hour. Actually, his searching always failed because he got distracted on his way by a really good song or dancer and couldn’t help himself. He was in a state in which if he saw a new face, he couldn’t record it in his memory, because his sight just didn’t work anymore. All he saw in the point on which his eyes were fixed was like one of those interferences on old TVs, like he only had the briefest flashes of what was happening.

Despite this, the crowd had formed a circle around him, and he danced like tomorrow didn’t exist; any sort of inhibition process washed away by the inundation of alcohol invading his brain through his blood. Yuuri was sure someone had joined him at the center of the circle at some point, but couldn’t tell who. He couldn’t even tell how much time had passed since he got back on his search for Phichit, but he was starting to feel a bad sensation in his stomach, and tons and tons of alcohol couldn’t prevent him from predicting that it would only grow worse until he vomited. That was when he left the crowd in search for the bathroom, or a bucket, or a private place.

In the end, he managed to get to the front garden path, where there was no one. He sat on a rock on the side, bent in half – the only position to calm down the nausea – and stayed there with his head in his hands. In that moment all the inebriation of vodka, rum and God knew what else he had drunk was fading away, like a cloud obscuring his head that was being carried away by the wind of his consciousness. His eyelids went heavy and swollen, and his need of fresh air could only be satisfied by breathing with his mouth.

«Good evening, love» said someone he didn’t see coming.

Yuuri raised his head to look at the stranger, only to let it fall back again. Victor kneeled in front of him and gently lifted his chin up. The Japanese man looked at his boyfriend with a dopey expression before being suddenly overwhelmed by the need of hugging him.

«Vicchan!» he shouted, throwing his arms around his neck and holding him tight. He kept on repeating «Omae, omae» in a continuous, satisfied mumble, rubbing his cheek on Victor’s.

«I guess the party’s almost over» said Victor, hugging him back. «Get up, I’ll drive you home. But we must tell your friends or they will freak out when they realize you’ve disappeared.»

The attendant almost lift up Yuuri with his own strength, since the black-haired man was barely able to stand on his feet. Victor put his boyfriend’s arm on his shoulder and together they came back to the back garden. The music wasn’t much loud anymore, it was instead just a soft sound in the background. The white spotlights were on, after hours of colored dots dancing in the dark, and people were getting ready to leave, so the crowd wasn’t clumped anymore and Victor easily found the group of interns stretching their backs and rubbing their eyes on some wooden benches in the corner they had monopolized. There were Chulanont, Nekola, Lee, Georgi and the male Crispino laughing, empty cups abandoned on the seats beside them, and when Victor and Yuuri got close, they noticed two other figures entwined in the shadows, behind a tree.

«Sara! You a genius, gurrrrrl!» the black-haired intern shouted at them, waving the arm he wasn’t using to grab on to Victor to support himself towards them, like in one of those departures scenes at the train station in movies, with white tissues and all. «Now we both are with superhot Russians!»

«Wi-five dude!» she replied with enthusiasm from the dark, raising her hand to her drunk friend as they both mimed an high five.

«Yuuri! Where were you, man? It looks like you have the bad habit of disappearing when drunk» said Phichit, coming close to his roommate. «Thanks Victor, we’re going home now» he added, patting the Russian surgeon’s shoulder.

«Don’t worry, I’ll take him there» the blond man replied. «I came all the way here, let me do this, at least.»

«I have been looking for you the whole night!» Yuuri exclaimed to his Thai friend.

«No, you’ve been _dancing like the devil_ the whole night» he was corrected by Georgi. «I seriously don’t understand how the hell your synapses work.»

Victor looked at the other interns and stated that Yuuri was the drunkest one. The two girls seemed to be only inebriated with infatuation, and the guys looked like they had already digested the binge. Maybe the Korean intern was a bit drunk too, since he was sitting with his elbows on his knees and his head lowered.

«See you then» Victor said goodbye as he helped Yuuri turn around and get to the car. The others waved at them, and when they made their way to the car, Yuuri collapsed on the back seats.

He slept all the way to his house, and when they arrived, his boyfriend had to wake him up. He knew that it was basically impossible to wake someone up from drunk-sleeping, but he couldn’t drive and keep Yuuri awake at the same time, so he had to take the keys from his pocket, pick him up and explore the house in search for his room, guided only by half-asleep mumbles. In the end, he managed to place Yuuri in his own bed, took his clothes and shoes off and covered him in his sheets. He didn’t want to undress Yuuri without his conscious permission, but his shirt was wet in sweat and his pants were dirty with grass.

«Vicchan» said Yuuri in a low voice, weakly grabbing Victor’s wrist as he left the bed. «Please, stay here.»

Victor couldn’t stay; he had two important surgeries scheduled for tomorrow and a sad teen and dog back at his house.

«Yuuri…» he tried to refuse, but the other repeated a begging «Please» that convinced him to wait until he fell asleep.

The blond surgeon took his place in Yuuri’s bed, and his boyfriend leaned his body against his’. Victor caressed his lover’s hair softly, as his breath became more regular and deep, and as the attendant’s mind went tarnished with dark words.

_“When I say unbearable I mean it.”_

 

«I can’t believe I was this drunk» said an incredulous Yuuri as he scrolled the photos on Phichit’s phone.

It was another working day just like all the others, and two hours in his shift, the intern already wanted it to end. He had a pounding headache, something that tempted him to steal some morphine from the pharmacy and just have a bath in it. All the memories he had were sporadic frames of a big, distorted movie recorded on a scratched disk. He might have met someone new, but it was like it never happened. He remembered that he looked for Phichit at a certain point, that Sara and Mila were kissing and that Victor drove him home and stayed with him for a bit. Indeed, he had found a note on his pillow, next to him, when he had woken up, in which his boyfriend explained to him that he couldn’t stay because he was very busy that day and he didn’t live alone. Yuuri didn’t need any explanation, but he did appreciate it.

And then, once in the hospital, a lot of people had waved at him, even people whose first name he couldn’t recall. An intern from second year, Jordan, had also made a Michael Jackson pose and pointed at him as if it was supposed to remind him of something. Well, Yuuri pretended not to be completely disorientated and smiled back at all those people. He would have gladly avoided all the pats on the shoulders by almost strangers though.

He had rushed to Phichit, in the interns room, and commanded to tell him everything. His Thai friend didn’t speak a word, he just handed him the phone he was laughing at, and then Yuuri was slowly connecting the dots with his hands in his hair.

«It’s not that bad, you’re a pretty good dancer» his friend tried to console him, leading him back to the dance battles pics. «You looked like an Asian Michael Jackson.»

«Well, they did say that at least three times in an hour, this morning» answered Yuuri, not consoled at all. «And Victor didn’t even enjoy the party, he left as soon as he came just to get me home…»

«The party was already over when he arrived» the Thai doctor pointed out. «And I don’t think he minded. He insisted when I said I would take you back.»

The heart surgery intern felt grateful to have such a patient lover who drove him home when drunk and left him notes in the morning, but felt painfully guilty and dirty because of what he had done. It wasn’t a major sin, he hadn’t gone around kicking bear cubs, but he felt like he did loose his dignity the night before. He hoped that feeling would leave him in a few days, but he didn’t even know anymore how to look straight in the face of his first year interns while explaining medical protocols or how to ask the nurses for a syringe.

Phichit gave him a vigorous pat behind his shoulders and got up from the bench. «Staying here and pitying yourself won’t help anyway. Rise and shine, King of Pop.»

«Dude, please» Yuuri told him off as he left the room, raising an arm as a goodbye. The Japanese intern took his stethoscope from his locker and went out his hideout, with an exhausting headache and no will at all to live that day.

 

It was no surprise to Victor when he found out his job request had been accepted.

Without saying it out loud, he did hope that they refused him though, but he was also aware that honestly, it was almost impossible. He was the heart surgeon with the lowest percent of deaths on the planet; being operated by him meant an excellent result at 99%. He was also very proud of that – even if he didn't need nor want to show it – so maybe he wouldn't have liked it very much if he was refused anyway. Either way, there wasn't an option that he considered being perfect.

After all, he was just changing his work place. It wasn't that bad; people did that every day. At least, that was supposed to be of some consolation to him, but Victor couldn't help feeling unsatisfied. Almost fooled even.

So he wasn't really thinking about the operation he was doing in that moment, when he reattached the two edges of the blood vessel he had just finished repairing. He was rehearsing his speech to Yuuri.

It wasn't like his boyfriend didn't know anything at all, but it had been a difficult conversation, then Yuuri had got drunk, and Victor had received the letter: they hadn't talked about it anymore.

Victor found Yuuri at the ambulance entrance in the ER, his scrub on and Phichit at his side. They were already ready, their hands almost leaning towards an invisible patient.

«Yuuri!»

Both the interns turned around. The heart surgeon made a big smile to his boyfriend.

«I need to tell you something important» Victor approached the two men. He wanted to kiss Yuuri, but it wasn’t a private place at all.

«There’s an urgent patient coming» he said with an apologizing tone. «I guess it’s not the right tim-»

«It’s here!» Phichit shouted, but the noise of the siren had already announced the ambulance.

The vehicle slid through the parking lot and braked in front of the two doctors, tires screeching on the tarmac, as the doors burst open.

Four paramedics carried a gurney out of the ambulance, all having both hands busy holding something. The two interns approached them as a woman presented the case.

«Male, fifteen years old, a knife is touching his left jugular vein…»

Yuuri looked on the stretcher. His blood got cold when he recognized Yuri Plisetsky’s face through blood.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yooooooo peeps!  
> Sorry for skipping a week, but I'm extremely busy with my state exam!  
> I wanted to spoiler that Yuri DID NOT ATTEMPT SUICIDE, it was an accident. I do not intend in hurting your sensibility like that at all, since I inderectly know what a bad issue that is.  
> So, thanks for reading! And please, let me know what you think in the comments below! Also, you can check my art or contact me on tumblr <3


	8. Your blade might be too sharp

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuri stared at the intern, a silent but strong request in his very passionate eyes: Do not speak. But it wasn’t an angry request, it wasn’t the same look he had when he demanded to receive the best treatments for his grandfather. There was unsureness in it, a pity clearly addressed to Victor, where his eyes leaned after Yuuri, and the reminder that he was just a frightened kid.

Yuuri almost threw himself on the gurney.

His scrub became wet with crimson red blood as he leaned on the teen’s head in order to make some kind of a shield to Victor’s inquiring look, with the excuse of checking the needle in the thin arm. The boy’s breathing was possible thanks to a respirator, but his blood pressure kept on falling to lower levels each second that passed. Yuuri couldn’t let Victor see who was the patient for no reason in the world, though. He would have surely become another problem, shouting orders and getting desperate – as it was only human to do. The problem was that Yuri’s life depended on the surgeons’ behavior, plus, Yuuri wasn’t completely sure Victor could legally handle the problem. He knew that doctors couldn’t operate their relatives, but the two Russians were only third grade cousins. Anyway, it was just another reason to send Victor away.

«Yuuri, let me see-»

«He is _my_ patient» the intern pointed out, giving his shoulders to him, glaring at some genuinely scared paramedics who perfectly knew that the teen was a relative of the attendant’s and had understood what Yuuri was trying to do.

At the same moment, doctors Giacometti and Popovich went out the ER automatic doors with their scrubs on, waiting for their own ambulance. The Japanese man noticed the two’s curious looks as they walked past them, but didn’t even glance at them.

«Come on, don’t be silly, I have nothing to do» Victor insisted, approaching the gurney.

«Please, give me some trust and let me handle this alone» the intern almost shouted.

The heart surgeon stood motionless, hit by the surprise of the sudden wrath coming from the easygoing doctor Katsuki. Phichit didn’t say a word – he probably didn’t understand what was happening – and waited for things to happen. Neither him nor Victor were stupid people though. The realization would come in a few seconds or even instants, and Yuuri only had the tiniest amount of time to slide inside without his boyfriend calling out the bluff.

«Yuuri, let me see who is it.»

Victor’s look grew cold and harsh in an instant. The intern felt a sensation of pure terror spreading through his body – like a wave pulling back in the sea and then crashing on the sand, washing away sandcastles and footprints; a wave of heat that caused his heart to race at an unnatural speed, pumping fire through his veins and making the man sweat in the cold rainy weather of Detroit.

«No» said Yuuri in low voice with a hesitant tone. He should have been surer, he should have been _authoritative_. Instead, he was shaking like the feathers of a bird gliding in the wind – not because he was lying to his boss, but because Victor had _realized_.

«Move» the attendant commanded as he approached Yuuri with wide steps. The intern held his breath as his friend stood in the surgeon’s way.

«Doctor Nikiforov, please, we’re the ones in the ER for today» Phichit said, even though he knew that the lie had been discovered.

« _Move_ » Victor repeated, more determined, more authoritative, more _angry_ and desperate.

Giacometti and Popovich had already reached Yuuri’s side, suspicious of the tones of that conversation. They couldn’t even ask what was happening, when Victor tried to make his way to the gurney using strength. Phichit reacted immediately, blocking the surgeon with his body as the blond man shook his arms towards Yuuri in an attempt to flee from the grip. The other two surgeons jumped on Phichit’s side, helping him hold Victor back while the heart surgeon started shouting to his boyfriend.

«Yuuri! Yuuri, let me see!» he screamed, almost crying. His voice was cracking, his cold mask as well. «Yuuri! _Yuuri_!!! Come back here!»

But the intern was already sliding through the automatic doors with paramedics close behind him, not sure which Yuuri he was calling. The last thing he saw outside the ER was Phichit running to follow them, and Victor falling to his knees, without the two surgeons letting go of him. The look on his face made Yuuri’s eyes fill with tears as he turned his head away. It was too much desperation to bear.

«Call Feltsman and make him send someone!» Giacometti shouted to the Thai doctor, and then they disappeared in a room of the ER, followed on the heels by nurses, trying to save the life of a fifteen-year-old boy with a knife in his throat.

 

While operating, Yuuri didn’t say a word. He was diligently focused on the blood vessel he was sewing back together, and only raised his head to glance at the monitor now and then, when the cardiac rhythm became slightly irregular, but the surgery went well, without complications nor anything else. But that wasn’t the problem. The problem wasn’t inside the operating room.

The problem was in the room behind the nurse station, where Victor was probably sitting on a chair, holding his head with his hands, frustrated by other people commanding him not to go to Yuuri. The Japanese doctor didn’t even want to think about that; he would have done a mess if his attention diverted from the operating field. He was almost done though, and if he was happy or scared of that, he couldn’t tell. He did want to stop sinking his fingers in Yuri Plisetsky’s throat, but he didn’t know how to face Victor.

He had lied to him, tried to deceive him, and left him kneeled on the ground as he slid away. Yuuri tried to put together something to say to his hurt boyfriend, but in all those hours standing in that antiseptic room, distressing himself about what were the right words to use, he only ended up tired and exhausted. He wanted to go home and just fall motionless on his bed, instantly asleep.

Instead, that evening he went to the nurse desk and asked for his boyfriend. Georgi, who was checking his patients’ files on the counter, indicated a room with a gesture of his head, and Yuuri opened the door with shaking hands wet with sweat.

The shutters were closed, and not a single ray of light entered from the windows, except from the white rectangle stretching from the door, meeting a pair of chairs on the wall in front of him and a long table. It took him a moment to identify the shape of Victor, sitting in a corner with his head leaning behind in the angle formed by the walls, hands entwined in his lap, his legs stretched in a false appearance of tranquility. He wasn’t calm. He was some kind of a generator of hostile tension spreading through the space, up to the ceiling and down to the floor. Yuuri couldn’t see his expression in the semidarkness, but he closed the door anyway before reaching his side. He was completely blind at first, but then his pupils grew larger as they got used to the absence of light.

«Victor» he said hesitant, taking his hand without receiving a physical or verbal response. He was afraid that Victor would snap in an instant and break his heart with way more easiness he needed to sew one. It was unbearable. But his stillness was even more.

«Victor, please, say something. Anything! _Do_ anything!»

The attendant kept still for a few seconds before moving. He leaned his elbows on his knees, and Yuuri felt some sort of barrier growing between them from that gesture. His blood became cold as ice in the slow realization that something in their relationship had been pulled so hard that it snapped, and he couldn’t tell the importance of the damage. It was like he needed x-ray to confirm the diagnosis.

«He’s fine now. I’m sorry I lied to you.»

And his words were the simplest ones, but he couldn’t speak more sincerely than that. Yuuri did feel sorry about lying – he shouldn’t have done it to his lover – but Victor had happened to react exactly how he expected: as an obstacle to save a patient’s life.

So, did Yuuri regret it? No. It was the right thing to do; that was the only realization he had come up to in those long lasting hours locked in an operating room.

 But what Victor said came against everything he expected.

«I am… such an incompetent person.»

How could it ever be true? He had saved the lives of hundreds of people, he shot out talent and professionality from every skin pore and his own colleagues looked at him the way you look at an unreachable standard.

«I mean, on the human side» he specified then, his head raised with his chin resting on his hands, but his look fixed on a tile of the floor. «I am the most brilliant heart surgeon, the most successful one. People in the medical field know my name across the world, and patients literally follow me from a state to another in order to get opened up by me. Every nurse and doctor and everyone else is always so kind to me, either because I can teach them something or because I’m handsome. And I’ve been with someone who loved my money more that they loved me. I’ve met so many people, but… No one stayed. No one. Not my family, not my long time friends. I managed not to save one of the closest despite my abilities, and I couldn’t even look after his grandson, and it is the least I should do. The man I see as a father disapproves the relationship with the one who was meant to be with me. I’m a failure. I failed in each contact with each person I’ve ever met. This includes you because I’m making you suffer.»

He did not shed a tear as he spoke. Yuuri stared at him in the darkness, his ears stretching to capture every sound of his lover’s hypnotic voice. Suddenly, he felt so lucky and ungrateful at the same time: he had a mom, a dad and a sister waiting for him at home, he had other friends back in Japan, his old teacher from the medicine school, and his best boy Phichit. He had so many people to rely on, yet that one he cared about the most was struggling in an ocean of sorrow, unable to spread its wings and escape from the deadly trap of regret. He had never stopped to think what his life would be without all those people, and he had never really considered himself grateful about it. He should have given more value to everyone he had.

«You will never be a failure to me» replied Yuuri. He put his hand on Victor’s back and rubbed it. «And I promise you aren’t a failure on any point of view. People make mistakes, it’s only natural. The differences lies between people that learn from them and become stronger, and those who don’t.»

Victor didn’t answer immediately. He kept staring at the floor for some time without saying a word, without being able to reply. He couldn’t contradict Yuuri’s words, but he didn’t feel better, because it wasn’t like he started feeling that oppressing realization that day. It was something he had known for a long time by then, but never had the courage to confess it, not even to himself. There were so many gray days in his life, hours that passed one by one without ever getting different, a time that was anonymous, in which relevant things never happened. At the end, was his life much different from an uneventful one? Despite all the prices, all the career achievements, all the recognitions, was there anything that mattered?

For a terrible second, he tried to think about how his life would have been without Yuuri. A man he had met just some weeks before who happened to be a turning point in his existence. He made him say “I love you” once again after such a long time, and Victor would be forever grateful about that.

It was just that… that feeling. _Ineptitude_.

He turned around. He finally faced his lover, who was still rubbing his back, trying to give any kind of comfort. Yuuri looked back at him with a hesitant expression which hid uncertainty. It was a look filled with sorrow, and the last thing the blond man wanted was to make him feel like that.

Victor pressed his lips against his lover’s in a desperate attempt of feeling human contact. A powerful energy spread from that simple chaste touch, like a drop of ink falling in the water, living motion travelling through waves an expanding in the space. In that moment, he felt calm; all the hustle inside his very atoms made his heart and soul quiet down, and his head getting back to the earth.

He loved that man more than he would willingly do, but just like how he secretly whished.

 

When Yuuri arrived to Victor’s cousin’s room, he found Phichit writing something on the patient’s folder, alternating his look from the monitors to the clock and the paper. The Japanese doctor thought of going to the next on his list, but forced himself to join his friend.

«Hey.»

«Oh, good morning» said Phichit, falling from the train of his thoughts. Dark lines marked swollen bags under his eyes, and the lock of hair that stood raised still over his right ear suggested that sleep had found the time it had found.

«Long night, uh? I hope you’re still functional for Cialdini» Yuuri joked. Sleepless nights were normal for an intern, and sometimes for attendants too; they were not that rare. Yuuri himself had once been awake for forty-two hours straight – no idea how he did it.

«Is he stable?» he then asked, leaning towards the boy to check on his surgical scar. The stitches held the two strip of yellow and red skin together, black lines against unhealthy colors.

«He’s fine. The beat is regular, the scar is good. He should wake up any moment by now.»

Yuuri observed the boy that lied asleep on the bed in front of him, with liters of chemicals flowing in his veins, his blood unable to give more intensity to the color of his skin, almost too pale for a living human. The violet marks under his eyes were even heavier than Phichit’s, and the straight long hair fell flat on the pillow under his head. He seemed tired in his sleep, but Yuuri understood why. He had been through too much for a kid of his age – not even the doctor himself had faced such difficulties during his whole lifetime, and he was almost ten years older.

«He sure has a guardian angel in heaven» the Thai intern commented as he closed the folder of papers, pulling his friend back to Earth. «How many chances were there that a neighbor would hear the dog bark like crazy and find the door open?»

« _Several_ guardian angels» Yuuri agreed. «That really sounds unrealistic. Victor was in a hurry that morning and didn’t notice he hadn’t closed the door. I can’t believe it.»

At least, he could say that Victor was the reason Yuri was alive, or else no one would have discovered what had happened. The night before, Yuuri tried to tell that to his boyfriend, but didn’t seem to convince him. Nothing he said actually seemed to work on making him feel better – he felt guilty for it, even though he already knew he wasn’t exactly the consolation master, but Victor was his lover and he should know what to tell him to raise his moral.

«Oh, right» Phichit exclaimed, reopening the folder. «The blood exams. Look, there’s no trace of chemicals nor drugs and medicines. He was completely clear.»

«That’s good news» the heart surgery intern said through a sigh of relief. He had also morbidly checked the boy’s arms and all and found no suspicious scars, and the paramedics confirmed that it seemed like he was making some food. Plus, it was unlikely he wouldn’t success in ending it by shoving a big ass knife in his throat.

«I hope this gets Victor more relaxed» Yuuri confessed. He wasn’t talking to doctor Chulanont anymore, he was talking to his best friend. «He’s always so gloomy and absent these last days. I don’t know how else I should try to comfort him beside facts; I believe he thinks it’s his fault.»

«Well, that’s normal, I guess. Not that he should actually feel guilty» Phichit added hastily under Yuuri’s glare «But he did have a role. He couldn’t prevent that man from dying, he had already done his duty. That simply was a chance and it happened. But he had his hands in it, of course he feels he is implied.»

Phichit’s argument was flawless. And unfortunately, Yuuri didn’t know exactly what to do – mostly because Victor didn’t quite enjoy talking about it, so they would often ignore the problem. In the mid-time, the interactions between the surgeon and the boy at home were sporadic and necessary. The teen constantly refused the other’s attempts to make a conversation, even just for grocery shopping or something insignificant like that. Victor also tried to understand what food he liked the most, so he would cook for him even though Yuri never joined him at the table; instead, he would take his plate and eat it in the guest room upstairs in which he lived. His never-ending silence and his permanent exile in his room made the attendant worry even more about how he didn’t have any human interactions. Sometimes, Yakov paid him a visit, but the atmosphere between him and Victor was clearly heavy burdened with the halo of something undone; Yuuri didn’t really understand what was it. But still, Victor felt like there was a war front between him and the other twos. Which made him only feel worse, despite he hadn’t done anything bad and was actually trying to fix it.

«Anyway, I haven’t seen Victor here yet» Phichit informed Yuuri, lost once again in his own thoughts.

«He comes at night when there’s almost no one, he doesn’t quite like people to talk about this.»

«Surprise!»

Victor entered the room with his arms opened, without any enthusiasm in his eyes. He wasn’t wearing his scrub, because it was his off day.

«Okay, I’ll leave you two alone, I have two more patients to check before I can legally sleep» said Phichit, leaving the folder on the bed for Victor to see himself.

«Thanks» whispered Victor, his head low and a barely showed smile, as the Thai doctor left, giving him a pat on the shoulder and closing the door behind him. The shutters were already shut. The attendant approached Yuuri and greeted him with a brief kiss on his lips, then sat on the chair under the window with the folder in his hands, the gray light of a new rainy morning spreading a feeling of sterility in the room. He proceeded in studying Yuri’s files as if he hadn’t already printed them in his mind.

«Phichit checked on him, he’s stable and should wake up very soon» Yuuri said in a low voice, trying not to bother him by repeating what the Russian doctor was already reading. Victor, instead, closed the folder and put it between the handle of the chair and his thigh, raising his head to listen. Yuuri continued, describing what he had known some minutes before as accurately as possible, and while doing it, he realized that, most probably, Victor was only too tired to read anything.

«I’m happy you were the one to operate him» the attendant replied at the end. Yuuri stood there a bit confused about how the other didn’t say anything related to what he had just finished explaining. «I trust you as a surgeon. You… You are a great surgeon, I’m proud to be your teacher, even though I haven’t been acting like it recently.»

His voice hid regret and sorrow. He was trying to apologize for something, even though some words died in his throat through hesitance when Yuuri approached him and caressed his cheek. Victor leaned his head on his lover’s hand, purring like a wounded animal in that soft touch of warm fondness.

«Vitya…» whispered Yuuri. «Why don’t you talk to me? I can’t help you if you keep me in the dark and don’t let me know what you think.»

The blond man grabbed the intern’s hand and pressed it hard against his lips, and invited him to sit on his lap. Yuuri followed his gesture and wrapped his boyfriend in a tight hug, leaving kisses on the soft hair. Victor put his head under Yuuri’s chin, his ear on the regular suffused pace of the heart.

«I’m just so tired already» he almost cried in his lover’s chest. «I feel like I have to do thousands of things on my own, and people don’t seem to appreciate it; they don’t even help. All they do is demand. Demand perfection. They strongly expect me to be the perfect surgeon _and_ the perfect man. I can’t be neither of these things; I tried, but the sacrifice was too high, and I’ve already paid it.»

Yuuri carefully listened, caressing the other’s head as he spoke. He felt his voice cracking and his body occasionally shiver, and he feared he would break apart like a glass statue. The Japanese doctor would have picked all the pieces and put them all back together, but he could have done nothing for the cracks. They would always be there.

Suddenly, Yuuri saw a brief jerk in the direction of the bed. He looked at Yuri, but he kept still, his chest raising and lowering regularly. It was weird, but the intern would swear he saw the hand tense. His look leaned on the teen’s face, and he surprised him staring back.

He was awake.

How long had he been like that? Was he listening?

Yuri’s look seemed very aware and focused, but waking up from anesthetics always made patients very confused. Plus, his body constitution was pretty slender, so he couldn’t digest the drugs so fast. Instead, he had probably been awake for a long time. Maybe he was already awake when Phichit had come to check; then Yuuri arrived before Victor, and the teen hadn’t been alone since the first doctor.

Yuri stared at the intern, a silent but strong request in his very passionate eyes: _Do not speak._ But it wasn’t an angry request, it wasn’t the same look he had when he demanded to receive the best treatments for his grandfather. There was unsureness in it, a pity clearly addressed to Victor, where his eyes leaned after Yuuri, and the reminder that he was just a frightened kid.

When the intern’s pager rang, the boy immediately closed his eyes, and the doctor saw his sudden fear when his chest stopped for a second, before returning to slow and deep movements. That guy did know how to fake sleep-breathing.

«I must go, love» the black-haired man said to his boyfriend, looking for his pager in the pockets of his white coat.

«Okay, it’s fine» replied Victor, taking a long breath as if he had just woken up, scratching his eyes. «I’ll leave you a message on the pager if we don’t see again.»

«I’ll try to get free by dinner anyway, and it’s still early in the day in any case. Why don’t you get some food by then, so we can eat here and talk? Things need to be said, not just listened.»

Yuuri was explicitly talking to the boy on the bed, but Victor didn’t realize it, of course. He stretched his back and nodded, half asleep, and Yuuri left the room to reach doctor Celestino and his surgery complications.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys, me again!  
> Sorry for letting you wait for two weeks, but... finals. I'll finish on July 7th tho. I hope you enjoyed the reading and please leave a comment below to let me know what you think, or contact me on tumblr if you need to ask me anything :3


	9. It's heaven when you're calling me high from under

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> «You can stay for tonight if you’re too tired to drive – I am too tired to drive» the attending finally said after some moments of silence. Yuuri was pulled back to the ground again.

«I think he’s finally retiring» Sara whispered in Mila’s ear as she checked her pager. The Russian doctor chuckled and threw a lock of hair away from her face with a gesture of her head, while people around them were gathering together to hear the chief.

«Morning, girls» Georgi Popovich reached Mila’s side, still fixing his white coat. They all had been summoned before starting the day, so there were still people missing. Behind the other Russian intern, there were Sara’s brother and Nekola.

«Does anyone know what we’re doing here?» asked the Czech doctor with his usual arrogant smirk.

«Someone might have fucked something up» Michele supposed, before greeting his twin with a kiss on the cheek.

«You mean, with a patient? Nah, everyone would already know» replied Mila.

«Oh no» Sara grabbed Mila’s arm with a sudden twitch. «Do you think it’s because Yuuri and… his boyfriend?» she ended the phrase whispering.

«It’s not Yakov’s style» a mellifluous voice behind the interns intromitted in the conversation. The attending Christophe Giacometti was leaning on the counter of the nurse station, calmly sipping a cup of coffee. «Plus, Yakov and Victor are very confident with each other, more than how the other attendings are with the chief. He wouldn’t embarrass him in front of everyone.»

«What for, then?» asked Sara, but Giacometti just shrugged.

«What did I miss?!»

Phichit Chulanont came running towards them, forcing his way between nurses and doctors. He looked like he had been awake for days, with purple circles under his swollen eyes and his hair all messed up by occasional naps leaning on the wall.

«Your friend Yuuri, to begin with» Emil answered, chuckling. «I don’t see Nikiforov either, by the way» he added, pretending to look around and smoothing his goatee.

«Yes, they are together. In Victor’s cousin’s room, waiting for him to wake up from a surgery in which Yuuri extracted a knife from his throat and sew it back together.»

The Thai doctor crashed any attempt of making a joke with that poisonously sarcastic answer, putting his pen back in his chest pocket and giving a folder to a nurse behind the counter.

«Relax dude, I was just kidding. Irony, y’know» was Emil’s answer, his sassy smirk now a bit less evident.

Phichit shook his head, scratching his cheek with a heavy expression of tiredness. «I know, I’m sorry. I just finished to check on my last patient before I could go to sleep, and now we get called from the chief. I hate night shifts.»

«It’s fine, no worry» said the Czech intern, now perfectly comprehensive of Phichit’s attitude.

During the night, more than half of the hospital was obviously not working, and getting things done became a quest. People in the labs were absent or nowhere to be found; same thing with technicians. The only way to obtain something was like blackmailing people or threaten their lives, a technique which wasn’t effective until you had worked long enough in that hospital. One time, Phichit almost missed a patient’s sickle cell anemia, and he needed to operate. Everyone else thought that was the moment when he decided to be the one to know everything about anyone. That way, everyone he needed a job to get done from had a price.

«Plus, why don’t you talk about the hot new guy Mila dropped off for Sara?» added the Thai intern, switching everyone’s attention in one single question.

«Sorry about that, I’m just too beautiful and all» Sara answered, shaking her soft hair behind her shoulders with a diva attitude.

Mila laughed and gave her a kiss on her lips, but she turned around to check among the crowd.

«Found him. Otabek! Otabek, come over here!»

The Russian doctor waved her arm towards Otabek, who noticed her and made his way to the group. Sara’s face didn’t crack any emotion which wasn’t “Bitch, I win.” The new resident had his usual bored face on, as if anything that happened around him was a bad joke. He always had his hair in perfect position, with his dark lock thrown on one side, so it made up for his “introvert” attitude. He decided to accept the girl’s invitation though.

Otabek greeted Mila and nodded to the other interns and doctor Giacometti. They had been introduced to each other at the party, but after a while everyone had been drinking a lot and Otabek had left for the console, so now Mila was the only one trying to have a conversation. The guy probably just wanted to flee from doctor Baranovskaya who was waiting at the end of the stairs with her usual stern and fierce face, like a murderer doll.

Yakov finally arrived from the hallway, and the crowd split in two around him like water around a bubble as he reached for the stairs that led to the operating rooms floor and got on top of the first flight. He cleared his throat with a cough, then joined his hands behind his back and checked on the faces in his audience. All the nurses of surgery and the surgeons were there, waiting in excitement for what he was going to say.

«As you know, the fifth year of internship for new surgeons is crucial. To most of them, this represents the end or the beginning of their real career in medicine, but this year is special, because we were the first in the world to introduce such a complex program of internship. More than three quarters of our surgeons come from all over the world, and they were chosen, so it is an honor to work with them, but gratitude isn’t enough. Some universities have offered fellowships for the best residents, the ones with the most hours spent in the operating rooms and the higher percentage of success.»

Everyone understood very well what the chief meant: the wild race had begun.

During the fifth year, the residents began to be first operators, which meant that they were in charge in the operating room. Success was indeed a great price to show when it came to fellowship, and so was all the time spent in surgeries. That was the reason the residents always struggled to get a surgery since the very beginning – apart from being medicine addicted.

As if that wasn’t enough, the chief would choose the new chief resident in a week, and the Crispino twins had opened a bet circle about who it would be. Many had bet on the very organized Phichit, many others on Mila’s strong fist. Georgi thought it would be him, because of his great reliability and professionality.

Sara instead was sure that Yuuri wasn’t someone to forget during the competition: he was a quiet guy, but he always managed to get the best surgeries and was the first intern to be first operator. He was also the reason she had switched to neurosurgery: she wanted to be _the greatest_ , but she could never be better that him in cardiothoracic surgery, and this was a matter of fact way before Nikiforov’s arrival.

«So this, dear colleagues, is a declaration of war: every breath and gesture of every fifth year resident will be watched and judged closely, and nurses, patients and other surgeons will be my ears and eyes. Which means everybody will need to be very focused from now on. Have a good day.»

Yakov’s speech was fast and honest as usual. The chief of surgery left through the applause of the crowd as Phichit looked around in search for Yuuri or also Victor. It was a thing they should have known about.

«What did I miss?»

Yuuri appeared from the hallway behind the nurse station, his hair pulled back from the air in his face during the run.

«Do you and Chulanont share entrance lines?» asked Crispino, and Emil Nekola laughed with him. Yuuri didn’t understand what he meant, but he ignored them and looked at Phichit for an answer.

«The fellowship. Yakov announced it by explicitly calling it a “war”, so I’ll have to sleep really hard this morning in order to get operative by the end of the day» his friend said.

«Yuuri, where’s Victor?» Giacometti asked the heart surgeon, throwing away his empty coffee cup. The plastic surgeon was famous for always being very friendly with his residents, but he didn’t usually call them using their first names; though he and Victor were very close friends, so he probably knew very well the details about their relationship and Yuuri himself.

«He’s still in Yuri’s room, he’s waiting for him to wake up» Yuuri answered, but was soon interrupted by Phichit.

«What do you mean he’s still waiting? That kid should have woken up like an hour ago, at the very max» said his friend in an alarmed voice.

«Yeah, but… It’s not… It’s not really a problem…»

«Yuuri… I don’t have to tell you that’s a _big_ problem, do I? Who was the anesthetist?» Mila asked, her eyes wide opened as she move away from her girlfriend embrace, leaning towards her Japanese colleague.

«Of course I know, I’m not a newbie» Yuuri replied, a bit irritated by the supposition he wouldn’t know such a basic thing. «But it’s not a problem, in this specific case» he insisted, but he didn’t even know why since he didn’t want to talk about it with everyone. «Thanks for checking my post-operatives, though» he hadded, patting Phichit’s arm.

«Uhmmm, I see» hummed Giacometti, grabbing the folder under his chest from the counter. «And the plot thickens» he added as he left with a nasty smile.

«Whatever, it’s your patient after all» commented Nekola, following Giacometti’s direction with a shrug. Georgi went behind him, and soon everyone else got back to their work – Mila with a huge sigh and a veiled threat in her glare. Yuuri remained alone with his Thai friend, but as he opened his mouth to speak, the other was already leaving.

«Phichit!» he called.

«Please, tell me it’s something that can wait for a five hours sleep» the doctor begged, turning around with his hand raised like a white flag.

Yuuri didn’t speak, but he looked at his friend with a very eloquent expression of concern in his face, and that was a way more effective answer than any word.

«I will die as a fellowship and sleep deprived man. Come» he said, his shoulders dropped with exhaustion, leading the way to the conference room.

 

The machines kept on emitting monotonous beeps, and nothing changed. Victor had stayed on the chair, still as a marble statue, his legs stretched forward and his chin resting on his hand, with his elbow on the chair handle. His eyes were fixed on a little stain on the floor, but his thoughts made him travel past and further his lifetime. He thought about everything he had done and everything he hadn’t, he wondered if he had ever skipped any lesson as a student, if he had consulted the wrong sources. He knew he had done everything right – his whole life he had done the right thing – he knew that on a very deep level of his inner self, but that feeling kind of scared him, troubled him, seemed like the suspicion that something was wrong. Not in the medical procedure he had applied on Nikolai, but in the fact itself that he felt sure.

Three rapid and gentle knocks on the door made him jump on his chair, back to earth. He felt like he had woken up from a deep sleep, and scratched his eyes, then passed a hand through his hair.

«Yes?»

Mila’s head appeared from the door, a careful question to come in in his look.

«Hi, Mila» said Victor in Russian. The doctor closed the door behind her and reached for Yuri’s bed.

«Yuuri told me he still hasn’t woken up so I got worried and came to check.»

«Yeah, thank you.»

A veil of silence lowered on their heads. Mila looked at Yuri’s face, unexpressive and relaxed in his sleep, and Victor glanced at the monitors.

«I received a message on the pager. Yakov wanted to talk to the personnel» he said, breaking the silence.

«Yeah, well, he wanted to warn us residents about the fellowships. It sounded more like a threat, actually» she laughed. «And he said that all the others will be his eyes and ears, but tell your boyfriend he’s not getting a special treatment because you sleep together.»

Victor made a soft smile «We’re not sleeping together.»

«I would jump on you if you were my boyfriend, but people can be very different» she shrugged, still joking. Victor didn’t reply but chuckled.

Mila was someone of the family. She had been an intern under Victor’s guide, and he was the one to write her letter of recommendation for Yakov’s program – at that time, he was already the chief of surgery at the Detroit General – and despite their very different position in the surgery hierarchy, they had become friends right away. She was friendly and approachable all the time, so it wasn’t difficult.

The red-haired doctor sighed, then reached the cardiothoracic surgery attending and put a hand on his shoulder.

«If you need anything, just ask» she said, her eyes stuck in his, her look deadly serious. «People are worried. I know you’re not the kind of guy that enjoys talking about his problems to other people, but Chris is your best friend, he just wants to help you. And Yuuri is your boyfriend, but you haven’t known each other for long, you need to let him and allow him to stay close to you. Just don’t push them away.»

Victor nodded, but he just did that so he could be let alone. Mila took her hand away, but she kept looking at him straight in the eye, and she didn’t seem convinced at all, but it wasn’t the right time to discuss, with Yuri suspiciously asleep at like half a meter beside them, so she just sighed and left.

«Check him out, find out why he still hasn’t woken up» she warned him before leaving, the Victor remained alone with machines and beeps one again.

He leaned his head on the chair, looking at the ceiling, and took a huge breath. Thoughts were crowding together, but he just couldn’t stand up and be functional. He would just stay there.

Letting people in? What for? Both Yuuri and Chris knew very well what his problem were, he didn’t need to explain anything. Well, he hadn’t talked to anyone about his conversation with Yakov or his plans, but just because it was all something to be defined. In that moment, it was a crucial time in Yuuri’s career, which meant Victor had to act carefully, not only for job reasons, but also not to twist his boyfriend’s tranquility. He needed to stay focused on surgeries. It was the most important exam of his career.

It was when he closed his eyes that he heard his name, a rattle murmured with hoarse voice.

He opened his eyes again, his look wandered with worry in the room, but clearly there was only one person besides him in that room that could speak.

«You’re awake!»

Victor held the handles of the chair so tight that his knuckles went white, as he leaned towards the young boy on the bed with an expression of relief printed on his face. He let out a lungful of air, and it felt like he started breathing again after ages. His mouth stretched in a smile of relief as tears began to fill his eyes, blurring the sight of Yuri’s awake and conscious look from the bed.  Victor was just so happy, so full of hope once again, and he let himself drown in that feeling, let it spread through his veins to his heart and brain, exploding from his face.

The surgeon left on the chair behind him the weight that was threatening his chest, and carefully approached the bed as if there was a god on it, as if it could slip away in a fragment of second.

«You’re awake» he murmured again, this time with a softer tone, a hand caressing the boy’s cheek in a gesture of affection he had never dared to do before.

But he loved that rude, insubordinate teen. He always used to play pranks on him since he was old enough to do it – Victor clearly remembered many of those episodes from his childhood. Yuri’s mother only had Victor’s father as a sibling, and the two kids were only children. The age gap between the two was thirteen years, but they silently had accepted each other as brothers without saying a word. When Victor entered the medicine school in Moscow, he had had to leave St. Petersburg and the seven-year-old Yuri, but they had always stayed in touch. His cousin and his grandfather would often visit him in the capital, but they all had an urgent life back in their cities.

Victor’s career had taken its wings, and he found himself travelling throughout much of Europe just to talk at conferences and open up people to fix their hearts. Then came the calling from Detroit, and he thought that he had no reasons to say no – after all, a fifteen-hours-long flight from St. Petersburg to Detroit wouldn’t be that different from a three-hours-long one from Berlin – they would still be painfully distant.

Then, Nikolai was diagnosed with annoying diseases that hit elderly people, and a bell rang: _what when he passes and leaves Yuri?_

That actually happened very soon, before any prediction of Victor’s. He knew though that no matter if his cousin was an adult or not, he would’ve had to take care of him.

«I’m sorry» the boy whispered, his voice blurred by Victor’s pressure on his cheek, and the hiccups breaking his throat.

«I got you» Victor answered as he leaned his forehead on the boy’s.

 

«Do you think of yourself as a privileged man?»

Sara’s question came as suddenly as herself. Yuuri had just taken the first sip of his coffee – the third that day, and it was barely lunchtime.

«Sara, I have a boring angioplasty in ten minutes, I sleeped like hell last night and I’m mistaking past simples. You’re not helping.»

«I still don’t fully understand how they use “get” in everything, but I will successfully remove my patient’s pineal cyst today anyway.»

Yuuri hummed in response, truly ignorant of Sara’s point. Did she want some encouragement before the surgery? She wasn’t that kind of doctor, she was a go-getter, and he was seriously afraid that she would step on his colleagues’ dead bodies in order to open up heads and cut brain lobes.

She pushed a lock of fluent brown hair behind her shoulders with the back of her hand, then spoke again. «I am innocently asking if Nikiforov’s using any specific method on you.»

«Excuse me?»

«Yuuri, our exam is in like – no time. I won’t believe you if you tell me your heart surgery attending boyfriend is not giving you a hand» she replied as they leaned against the wall to let some doctors run with a patient on the bed. They watched them in silence as they jumped on the elevator before the doors closed.

«I don’t need anyone’s help to study, I’ve been doing it on my own for almost twenty years now.»

«You’re not answering the question.»

«Okay, listen» Yuuri stopped and faced her friend, his hand raised towards her. «He’s in a bad period of his life right now. And he could be an examiner, this thing must be a joke for him.»

The Japanese resident started walking again, and his colleague followed him – again.

«You haven’t started studying, have you?»

«Why aren’t you in the canteen?»

«Yuuri, the exam is in one month!» she shouted, her hands raised to the ceiling as if she was evoking some deity.

«I work better under pressure» he lied. «Go grab something to eat.»

« _Fifth-year residents don’t eat_ » she hissed, leaning her face towards Yuuri’s before speeding up her pace and walk away with her disillusionment of finding some help. Well, the Japanese doctor just wasn’t the right guy.

«Hey, dude!»

Phichit gave a pat on Yuuri’s shoulders, then passed him.

«Phichit!» the Japanese doctor said. «Weren’t you sleeping?»

«Fifth-year residents don’t sleep» he shouted back, walking with his head turned behind towards his friend, which caused him to hit the cart on his way and fill the floor with gauzes, syringes and lattice gloves.

«God, I’m so done fucked up» he whispered to himself, and he perfectly knew when English speakers used that expression.

 

It was way too surprising that Yuuri managed to actually get free by dinner time. He got _so free_ that he was able to get out of the hospital and order some food by himself. He should have probably had a whole night of study planned though, but he didn’t really care. A day less wouldn’t matter. But he and Victor hadn’t been dining together since forever, and he wouldn’t let anything stand in his way this time.

On his road to Victor’s surprised face he did not meet any of his residents friends, which was pretty cool since he wanted to avoid them – again, it was that damn exam’s fault. Yuuri was aware of how important that thing was for his career, his life from then on, but he didn’t seem to be able to convince other people of that. Phichit himself always asked him if he had finally started studying – he was starting to get on his nerves actually, but the Japanese doctor knew that it was best-friends-forever concern. Anyway, it was stressing being afraid of laying on the couch because he would be asked the same question again for the umpteenth time.

When the doors of the elevator opened on the intensive care unit, he felt a shock of energy spreading from his toes – an unusual feeling for someone in that wing of the floor – so he walked pretty fast towards Yuri’s room, plastic bags with delivery food rhythmically hitting his knee. But he didn’t need to go further the nurse station.

«Hey there, doctor Katsuki!»

Yuuri turned around to look behind the counter, and found his boyfriend standing there, a wide smile on his tired face, but it was different from that morning. It was a sincere smile, he was happy of seeing Yuuri and he was showing it.

«Doctor Nikiforov» he said, approaching the counter and leaving the bags on it. «I thought you were still in your cousin’s room.»

«Well, he woke up» he said, rubbing his hands with a larger smile, like a kid receiving a Christmas present.

«Oh, did he? Such wonderful news!»

Yuuri glanced over a nurse sat near them and working on a computer, and found her looking at him from the bottom with an expression of diffidence.

«I-I will go check on him, he’s my patient-»

«He’s been checked by his doctor’s boss, that’s fair» Victor replied with a wink.

Yuuri glanced towards the nurse once again, then led Victor to the hallway, away from her ears.

«Are you sure you shouldn’t stay?»

Yuuri betrayed his own wishes with that question, but he asked it anyway. The Russian boy had been through a heavy surgery in order to get a knife out of his throat, in a generally bad period of his life, in a foreign country, with a cousin that had been living abroad since he was seven as his own relative alive.

«You know, we talked – after he woke up, I mean» Victor replied, shrugging. «About a lot of things. Mila has the night shift, so she will keep an eye on him. He did ask me to go home though. He was pretty insistent» he added, seeing his boyfriend reaction.

«It’s just… He was operated not long ago, he’s alone in the world.»

The Japanese surgeon looked at the other straight in the eyes, in search for a confirmation. He wasn’t that selfish – he needed to be sure Victor was telling the truth when saying his cousin made him go home.

«Well, there are… Many unsolved questions, we both need some time on our own to think about what to do next.

«You’re legally his guardian. You’re the one that takes the important decisions, such as… where to work, for instance.»

«Yuuri» Victor cupped his boyfriend’s face with his hands. The black-haired man’s cheeks fitted perfectly inside his palms, and the dark eyelashes caressed the surgeon’s slender fingers. The Russian doctor clearly saw hesitation and sorrow raising in Yuuri’s look, but he wouldn’t let him.

«These are not the things I want to talk about this evening» he said, his voice full of reassurance. «Let’s go have dinner at my place, where Makkachin will greet us with his tail wagging, and let’s leave any serious question for tomorrow.»

The resident smiled, let his fear fade in Victor’s heat and warmth, but looked around to see if anyone was watching. Victor remembered they were in a mere hallway and let go of him, trying to suffocate the instinct of pressing his lips on those rose cheeks.

«Oh, except for your exam, of course.»

Yuuri’s face turned grey.

He nervously chuckled. «What?»

«Once home, I’ll give you my patients’ folders and I will ask you questions on them. We don’t have much time left so we’ll use this method to speed up things. I used it for an exam at university once.»

«I thought we would watch Moulin Rouge together…»

«I have a lot of surgeries records. They’re much more _rouge_.»

 

«This is seriously insane. Like, that aneurism literally exploded in your face, but you managed to save the vessel!»

Yuuri was laying on the couch with Makkachin’s head on his lap and a glass of wine in his hands, glittering eyes stuck on the tv.

Thousands of papers and folders laid everywhere in the living; they fully covered the coffee table, concealed the surface of the kitchen counter and formed tall piles on the carpet, near the couch where the two doctors were studying.

«Well, it’s basically over now, that was the important part. Have you seen the clip?» Victor grabbed the remote control from under the sleepy poodle’s belly and turned the tv and DVD player off. He looked at his boyfriend with a question written on his face: he wanted to know from Yuuri what he had done in the surgery with the aneurism.

The Japanese doctor took off his glasses and rubbed his nose as he formulated thoughts, but they had been doing that for… how long? They couldn’t even tell. Yuuri’s brain was reduced to a feeble mass of gray and white matter, and the wine he was given to relax wasn’t helping.

«Uhm, well… The patient had been involved in a car accident… I- I need to check the folder one more time» Yuuri leaned towards the table to grab a pile of paper but Victor stopped him before he could.

«That’s enough for one single night» said the attending, grabbing the other’s wrist and entwining their fingers together.

«No, I can do this, just give me-»

«If I ever happen to find you this sleepy in my ward, I would not let you near an operating room, love» Victor insisted. «Even if you’re cold-hearted when needed.»

Victor’s words almost sounded like a reproach, but it wasn’t, it really wasn’t. Yuuri’s expression though reacted to that last comment, as he pulled his hand back and petted Makkachin behind the ears, causing him to stretch his paws and reach his owner’s belly.

The heart surgeon straightened up on his part of the couch and leaned towards his lover, who had buried his nose in the glass.

«Yuuri, you were great» he said, his look almost imploring. Yuuri wasn’t looking back at him. «You did the right thing, and the surgery went just fine. You saved his life when I couldn’t.»

«I let other people take you down to the ground while I ran away with your cousin on a gurney» he murmured, face still low. «Did I mention that I tried to hide him from you? That I started a surgery without my boss’s permission?»

«That’s what surgeons do. They save lives when they’re in danger.»

«I lied to you.»

«So what?»

Victor insisted on trying to reach for the black-haired man’s hand. Makkachin got tired of their louder voices and decided to get off the couch and go sleep in his basket. Yuuri finally raised his eyes from the red liquid and faced his boyfriend. The determination on the Russian man’s expression was almost intimidating.

«Sometimes we lie to the people we love… to keep them safe.»

Victor’s look went deeper than how it was probably meant to be. It became quite distant suddenly, as if he was thinking of a few different things altogether, as he distractedly caressed his lover’s hand. His eyes were stuck in Yuuri’s, but he was only the first layer. There were memories, feelings, experiences hidden in that look, things that maybe the resident would never know, and they were laying bare on the ground like ruins after a storm. Yuuri could try to fix the damage, but he didn’t even know what the storm was like.

«You can stay for tonight if you’re too tired to drive – I _am_ too tired to drive» the attending finally said after some moments of silence. Yuuri was pulled back to the ground again.

«Uhm, yes, I- Just tell me where to put the folders and I’ll be okay on the couch.»

«Do you…» Victor hummed, his index finger on his pouting lips as he always did when thinking or nervous. «… Not want to sleep in my bed?»

«What? And leave you to the couch? Of course not!»

«That’s not what I meant» Victor explained «We could sleep together. In the same bed.»

Yuuri’s face became red, and he would swear an aneurism had just exploded in his brain. He stayed sit on the couch motionless, staring at his boyfriend, to whom his reaction did not go unnoticed.

«Yuri will get pissed if he finds out someone slept in his bed, but if you don’t wa…»

«No, that’s fine, I just didn’t understand…»

«Oh, yeah, of course…»

«So I thought you didn’t mean that…»

«Whatever you feel more comfortable doing…»

«Sure, that’s great!»

«I’ll go find something you can wear» Victor stood up and took Yuuri’s empty glass to the sink. The Japanese doctor felt like he had screwed up all he actually wanted to say, then sighed and admitted his incompetence. He would never be the flirting guy between them. So he decided to just say things how they came to his mind.

«Victor, come here» he said when his boyfriend was leaving the room. The Russian man turned around and looked at him with interrogative expression, as if he needed something. Yuuri patted the spot beside him, on the couch, and the other followed him.

As soon as Victor sat down, he leaned forward and said: «Don’t find anything» and kissed him.

The attending quickly answered to the kiss, covering Yuuri’s hands as they cupped his face, but they soon migrated to somewhere else.

Their lips searched more deeply for one another, before running down to necks and collarbones, leaving red traces behind. Victor was the most impatient between the two of them, and he eagerly explored every inch he could touch on his lover’s body, as they hastily took their clothes off.

Yuuri melted like ice under that soft but adamant touch, his head like a sky full of a thousand exploding fireworks, synapsis destroyed, Victor finding his way through his last and fragile layers of hesitation. He felt the platinum hair ticking his cheeks as his lover’s lips travelled on his chin, his throat, his sternum, as if he was tasting some rare dish. Yuuri made his hands wander through the vails and mountains of Victor’s muscles, feeling each contraction under his palms as the attending himself began to loose control, pushing harder on his skin with his lips and going down the other’s chest, which now was inflating at the highest pace.

«Yuuri, are you sure? Because I’m going for the fullest.»

His voice sounded weary and greedy as he panted on Yuuri’s belly, looking up at him.

«Yes» the Japanese surgeon answered, impatient to hear the sound of his lips disclosing again on his skin, to feel his soft hair on his fingers and their bodies entwined in a cloak of heat and sweat, to hear what his voice sounded like when moaning, to see his expression when he lose his mind.

He wouldn’t articulate many more words beside it that night.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo finally I'm back! Sorry for keeping you waiting, but I've been really too busy... Anyway, I need to make some adjustment when speaking of words.  
> "Attendants", as I used to write, was actually "attendings", the surgeons that have completed the formation cycle and all. Interns are just students from the first year, while the residents are those from the second to the fifth year, when they pass an exam and become fellows, or at least so I read from the internet. I'm going back to correct this stuff, but please enjoy the reading and leave a comment :3

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked the story - or if you didn't - please leave a constructive comment and let me know about major english mistakes! Thank you ヽ(ｏ`皿′ｏ)ﾉ


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